Gunarm
by Sakurazukamori6
Summary: Jo and Meg experience first love, only to have it trampled on time and time again. Warning: Yuri,language. Chapt19 Do those words really matter when they're together?
1. Channel Surfing

She's like air.

She's like water.

She's like the sky.

I keep telling myself, I can hang onto her. That she'll remain, and be with me. That she will remain under my arm, that she will remain under my gun hand.

I have two of them. One for myself, and one for her. But she could have both of them if she wanted. She could have Django too. She could have it all.

If she just asked.

Sometimes she reminds me of the rain. When it pours down your back, when it seeps into your clothing, your hair, your skin, your bones. Clinging, and never letting go, and yet when the sun comes out.

Evaporation.

Sometimes she reminds me of the sun when it's just coming up from behind the horizon, when sounds are muted, and the warmth on your face is the only thing you can feel.

She's like her own universe. Interstellar and revolving. Never stopping for a second, except to look you in the eyes.

Her eyes are blue. An intense blue, something you could asphyxiate on, piercing your lungs, like hot lead, and choking on your own blood.

Her hair's the color of fired blood.

I remember she told me it keeps her from getting lost because everyone can spot her by it. They can see it coming a mile away and she's right. She's always right. I can always see her coming a mile away and yet I'm never prepared for her.

I heard her laugh in the other room. She's talking loudly about...it doesn't matter because listening to the sound of her voice is more important. That's how I can tell she is happy.

Wham!

"Amy, god you're such a brat. I wanna play too!"

"No, you'll break it, and I don't have enough money to buy another one."

"But why?"

"Because Sei's a cheapskate."

"No! That's not what I meant. Why can't I play?"

Slam!

"Open up Amy, don't shut me out like this. Oh! Why you brat. Fine see if I'm ever nice to you again."

There's a moment's pause.

She turns to me and smiles.

"Jo, what are you doing?"

She smiles again.

I realize I'd been holding my breathe, that's why it's so quiet.

She pulls up a stool and sits next to me. She turns to the television screen, blinks at it, and then rolls her eyes.

"Can I change the channel?"

I keep quiet because she should know the answer to that.

"Jo, I'm hungry. Where's Kyouhei?"

I continue to keep quiet, because she knows all the answers to all the questions she asks and yet...

"What are thinking about Jo?"

Her foot accidently brushes against my shoe. She continues to stare at me, and nudges against the heel of my boot with her big toe. She pouts, huffs at her orange bangs, and abandons her previous question.

I believe it's the only question that she doesn't have the answer to.

I like that.

"Watch out! Oh my god, I hate horror movies. Why do the people have to be so dumb-oh my god watch out, he's right behind you. Ah!"

She hides her face in her two small hands.

"Is it over Jo?"

She removes her hands without my cue, and I think I'm paying more attention to her than I am the movie. This is why I'd rather watch television on the rooftop.

"Whew. Jo, this is scary. Let's watch something less...um scary. Oh, isn't there a Lovely Princess marathon going on right now? Jo, quick change the channel."

Lovely Princess?

"C'mon Jo."

Sounds like lovely crap.

"Oh why do I even bother. No one wants to do anything fun."

Shesighs loudly, so I can hear. She does it again in case I ignored the first sigh.

I change the channel-

She perks up.

-to a Samurai Iron flick marathon.

She deflates. Like a balloon.

"Jo, you're so mean. I can tell when I'm not wante-Oh my god, that's so cool. What do you call that?"

It seems I turned the channel right in the middle of a decapitation move gone wrong.

Meg doesn't know it yet. But she will soon, in about 5, 4, 3, 2, 1-

"Ewww, change the channel."

I change the channel because I've already seen this episode. I stop on Zombie Hell VI. I take one good look at Meg, who looks like she's about to wet herself, and I change the channel again, and for about a five minute period, I flip through each station.

I stop on Blood Lust Mayhem Fighter.

"Is it just me or does that guy have a huge head?"

My lip twitches.

"Geez, is he supposed to be an evil genius? Gross, I can see a vein."

The corner of my mouth is fighting the gravity known as Meg's commentary.

She doesn't mean to be funny, it's just how it comes out.

"I hope he doesn't tip over."

Tipping over would be the least of his problems since his arm is currently being chewed on by a huge monster bat.

"Don't bats only come out at night? Why would it come out during mid-day?"

Maybe because it's having lunch.

"Look he tipped over."

Because his head was ripped off.

"Jo don't you think this is boring? Let's go to the movies. Whatya say Jo?"

I say-

"No."

"Aw c'mon Jo. My God, you're so boring. What if I promise you a good time."

Sometimes Meg will say something that completely catches me off guard that I know shouldn't, and yet still, I find myself staring at her questioningly when she phrases things in her own way. I know she has naivety that could probably bore holes through a tanker, and that she's completely harmless, but sometimes I wonder...

"A good time?" And sometimes, rarely, I like to play along with her naivety because in a way it does my mind some good. She never gets the joke, and I think I like it that way.

"Yeah, a good time, yuh know Jo? Popcorn and dark aisle seats."

"Dark?"

I hate that I both enjoy and detest her innocence. All those times of teasing her without her knowing, slipping in words that go above her head, and preforming small gestures that any other person would read as attraction as she remains oblivious. I hate how she can trust everyone around her sometimes, or how helpless she is when someone stronger comes along. It makes me angry that some day, some where, I might be late in coming to the rescue and then I think what will happen. Will her innocence, her faith, her goodness save her then? It annoys me that I know the answer to that, and it torments me that I can't let it go.

I want her to be strong. I want her to stand on her own. I want...I want so much for her, and she deserves it all. More than I could give her. I keep thinking, if she remains with me itwill be a good thing, but then I realize how selfish I'm being. I have to ask myself who it will be good for, Meg or me? And I instantly know the answer to my own question.

Its always been me, and if Meg remains with me, it will always remain that way.

"Meg."

"Yeah Jo?"

"I'm going out, stay here to wait for Kyouhei."

"What! That's not fair. Why do you get to go out and I have to stay here? It's so unfair Jo...it's so unfair it should be a...a...crime."

I watch her as she gives me a not-so-nice look. One of those determined stares that means she won't take no for an answer. One that comes with hair flipping and hands on the waist. She's trying to stare me down, but I wonder if she realizes that I'm taller than her, and stronger and...meaner.

"Meg." I should only have to say this once.

She gives me a sharp glare, then suddenly it melts into something pleading, and when she sees her trump card isn't working, it turns back to angry, and I ready my ears for the inevitabl-

"Uh, I don't know why I put up with you, with any of you for that matter. Whatever, go out, do whatever_ Jo_ thinks is _fun_, because obviously, _Meg_ doesn't know what fun means. Go out and shoot some bad guys, or shoot the pavement, or the air, or whatever!

She sits back down in her chair with a bit more force than necessary, and turns her head to look out the window.

"I just thought we could do something fun, yuh know,_ together_."

Right now, she's stabbing me in the chest, and it hurts, hurts worse than any bullet hole or sword's edge could inflict.

"Meg."

"Yeah?"

"Don't wait up for me."

"Yeah."

I hate myself sometimes. I hate myself so much sometimes that I wish I could just take that gun that was promised to Meg, and use it on myself.

**A/N:** Okay, this fanfic took a weird turn. I thought I could bring something nice and fluffy, with a bit of humor, but then it spins out of control and I end up with this.


	2. You started it!

"Who wants seconds?" Kyouhei, with platter in hand, and a smile on his face served the three women he had gotten to know very well for this past year…well actually women and…child…oh and Jo, who was kind of like a…not really feminine, but still a woman, but not so much…

"I do, I do." Amy with a spirited wave called him over, and as he brought a plate over he tried to dodge the gadgets that were littered on the floor in front of her.

Sei noticing his plight turned to Amy, "Amy, this isn't your room, please pick up after yourself when you're done here."

It always amazed Kyouhei when he heard Sei, who was all business, talk in such a warm manner that incited within him thoughts of a mother explaining to a child, or a big sister kindly guiding her younger sister to the correct answer.

"Why?" Although sometimes it amazed him even more that Amy didn't have one shred of understanding when it came to normal human logic, as in when you made a mess after yourself, you were supposed to clean up after yourself.

"Meg, are you feeling alright? You haven't touched your dinner."

Meg, who had a sour look on her face, was gently prodding at her food with her silverware.

"I'll pass, I'm not in the mood for curry tonight. My stomach hurts."

He didn't know why he'd done it, but it was like a reflex when he turned suddenly to stare at Jo's reaction to Meg's condition. He really didn't know why, but he'd found that his eyes lately would be drifting over to Jo every time something concerning Meg came up. He didn't know if it was interest in what the other thought, because he could admit to himself that Jo was a very interesting person, which seemed like the understatement of the year. It was probably because Jo barely expressed any type of emotion, so when she did, it was like some kind of miracle…or disaster depending on the expression she was giving.

So when Kyouhei turned to study the countenance of Jo it seemed that the favors for a nice, quiet, evening meal were being slowly destroyed, and tipped in the favor of the Jo's disaster he had been alluding to earlier, because right now Jo kind of looked…annoyed.

And annoyed and Jo didn't go well together. It was gasoline and matches; you just didn't put them together unless you wanted an explosive reaction. It was strange to read an emotion like annoyance on Jo's usually blank, impassive features. It was almost like some kind of freak show that you couldn't peel your eyes away from, even though you really wanted to…not that Jo was freakish looking, heaven's no, but the situation…

"Is there something on my face?"

Kyouhei instantly jabbed himself out of his thoughts with a quick nod of the head, "No, uh I was just…" Well this was just embarrassing.

"Just what?"

This was bad. Jo sounded both annoyed and curious, and that to Kyouhei seemed like a bad combination of foreign emotions he would rather not have Jo displaying. He'd seen what Jo could do when she was curious. Not that it happened a lot, but when it did, and she couldn't kill something with just bullets, it seemed she liked to find other ways of seeking out their weaknesses. Other ways that usually involved a lot of bloody trial and error.

"Geez Jo, lay off the guy. He looks like he's about to wet himself with your interrogation."

Now Kyouhei had expected this remark from cute Amy-chan, who had a weird way of diffusing a situation with some of her sometimes mean, but really harmless jokes, and he would have continued to think it had come from Amy, if he hadn't been for the voice recognition and the visual of Meg saying these words with a bit more bite than warranted if it had just been a joke.

Jo's attention shifted from him to Meg so quickly that you would have thought her narrowed crimson eyes had always been on Meg. Blue eyes, under a spray of red hair narrowed back, and Kyouhei felt like he and the rest of them were caught between a very dangerous staring contests.

Damn, where were those big glowing brain things when you needed one? Because right now he'd rather have that distraction than deal with two very gun handy women.

Jo's fork dropped into her plate.

Meg continued to stare at Jo, and the quiet that existed in the dining room made for a pretty powerful weapon, one that Kyouhei thought would be the death of him.

"Meg?" With that one syllable, Kyouhei and just about everybody else in the room were holding their breath.

"What?" What was going on with Meg today, usually she was much more nicer when she talked to Jo. This was too strange.

Jo, who was still looking down at her plate, and her lonely fork began to get up from her chair. She set her plate on the coffee table, and then was walking out the door. She looked back at Meg as she exited the RV, and it wasn't hard to figure out that she wanted the redhead to follow her.

Meg got up, set her plate down with a bit more force than necessary, then stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her and clanging down the three steps that separated the RV from the ground.

Kyohei realized that his mouth was a little open. He looked around and saw that no one had noticed. Good. He closed it, and he saw Amy picking at her food as if the little girl had lost her appetite, which had to be just about as strange a sight as Meg and Jo fighting. She picked at her curry some more, and then with a tiny shrug of her shoulders she turned to look at the other occupants in the room.

"Lover's spat." Amy seemed to consider the words she used to describe the situation, which again was quite a sight since the smallest member of the group didn't have any tact when it came to choosing her words. She shrugged her shoulders again as if she thought it was fine, and then she shoved her spoon into her mouth with relish and began chewing noisily.

Sei said nothing, and Kyohei watched the door silently as he picked at his food.

* * *

"If this ain't important Jo, then I'm going back inside." Meg's words were met by Jo's silence, and if there were anything that Meg thought would set her off tonight it would have to be Jo's indifference. She wasn't going to stand for any of this, well not anymore.

"What's wrong with you?" Dear god, it speaks.

"What's wrong with me? I was just having a quiet meal. What's wrong with YOU!" There was nothing Wrong with her, so what, she might be a little annoyed with Jo for being wintry with her these past couple of days, but that was her right. She had every right to be angry. Stupid Jo, she could just-

"Your attitude is starting to-" Jo stopped and then looked at Meg as if she would provide the missing words to this dilemma.

"To what?" And dammit, if Jo said she was annoying, she swore, she'd hit her. She'd slap her right across the face, or kick her in the shins.

"Starting to…suck." Well that was unexpected. Jo was trying out new words.

"Suck?" But even though it was a new word it still meant the say thing as annoying. Jo could take her new word and shove it up her-

"Yes. It's bothering me."

"I'm," she paused and then pointed at herself as if this was unfathomable…because it was. These past few days, Jo, not her had been the…sucky one. She was so not sucky. If anything she was patient and forgiving and unsucky. "Bothering you? Are you kidding me Jo? You've been avoiding me these past days. How the hell could I BOTHER you when I haven't even been around you?"

"Meg." Nuh uh, not this again.

"Don't think I'm jus' goin' t'roll over just because you're using that tone with me. Because I'm not Jo, so don't try to bully me."

"I'm not trying to bully you." Jo sounded like she would rather use her guns to solve this problem than good ole fashioned words. Well good, it was high time she learned how to have a normal conversation, or a normal fight instead of it having to blow up, literally.

"Look Jo, I think I'm being the bigger person here," by the look Jo was giving her, she seemed to disagree. "And as the bigger person here, I think I deserve an apology, or an explanation to why you've been avoiding me these past few days." There, that sounded pretty good to her, more than good. She sounded level headed, cool, and confident. Damn, if Jo wasn't impressed then she didn't know what to do.

Jo didn't look impressed, but she did look a little guilty. Ah ha! Now it was only a matter of what technique Meg had to use to drag the truth out of her. She could cry but that was kinda dirty, but hell she wasn't past using it on Jo. Not when the other girl had hurt her feelings enough to warrant real tears. Why would Jo avoid her? It had been tearing up at her for day now. It was why she had bags under her eyes.

"I…Meg," Jo sounded kind of tired as she said her name. She sighed, and then sat down on the steps of the RV. "Meg, I haven't been around because," I had to save the world. I had to clean my guns. Django needed repairs. I watched a whole marathon of Zombie Hell because it seemed like the thing to do. Meg was sure that Jo's explanation was within one of these phrases, and if it wasn't it was close enough. "Because I thought I should give you some room."

"Room?" Okay this was getting confusing real fast. "Room, I have a room, it's right next to yours. It has pink curtains. It has a nice big bed. It has plush pillows."

Jo shook her head.

"I don't mean that." Jo appeared conflicted. She looked like she was having trouble explaining herself, which was a far cry away from her normal cool and collected self. What would she have trouble explaining? Jo stretched her hands apart staring at them like she had never seen them in her life. Like they were the most interesting things on this side of the planet. It looked like she was judging the physical space between her hands and the troubled expression on her face made it seem like they were millions of miles apart instead of a couple of inches.

Meg didn't know if she was talking about Jo's hands, or her and Jo anymore.

**

* * *

A/N:** I'm definitely writing another chapter because for some reason this one-shot doesn't want to end.


	3. Moment Killer

"Jo, would you cut that out?" Jo was still staring at her hands, and Meg rolling her eyes because dear god did Jo have a short attention span, tried to keep her irritation in check.

Yes. Calm. She was calm. Deep breathe. Deep…

Jo hadn't stopped staring at her hands and Meg--with a small prayer sent up to the heavens in hopes of some benevolent god listening--promptly slapped them away from her face, like she was a small child.

Okay, now she was calm.

"Jo, look at me, I really think I need an explanation."

It was then that the other girl had turned to her with her hands offered up, like they held within them a gift that could wipe these past few horrible days out of her memory. Unfortunately, those offering hands were empty, and Meg suddenly thought about these nice pair of earrings she had found, but didn't have enough money to buy. Then she thought quickly that this was neither the time nor the place, since she wouldn't forgive Jo for earrings. Although if she threw in a bouquet of flowers then maybe she could…

No!

"Yes Jo, we all like your hands, now"-

"That's not what I meant." Meg stopped herself from replying. There was something in Jo's voice that made her want to sit down next to the girl and console her, but she beat that reaction down. She couldn't forget that she was having a fight here.

"These hands…I've done a lot of things with these hands." Meg without her having realized it had sat down next to Jo on the steps, inexplicably drawn to the other girl and the strange words that were coming out of her mouth.

Meg nodded her head wanting for more than anything --more than anything in the world--for the other girl to continue.

"Things that…I don't regret, or feel sad over. I've killed, I've maimed with these hands. I've hurt so many people and I won't take those things back."

They were now facing each other. The setting sun spilling orange light over the pair and catching dusk motes that tumbled in the air.

Meg felt herself hold her breath.

"You're," Jo looked to the side, and her eyebrows furrowed together in what Meg had to say was the strangest expression the other girl had ever worn. "You're clean." Jo really looked like she was struggling with her words, and balling up one of her hands in a fist she held it in front of her face.

"This is…the only thing I have to offer to you." Jo then placed the other hand on her shoulder and shook her as if she was in a daze --for all her sense, she probably was--The other hand unclenched and she brought that one to rest on the other side of her shoulder.

"Are you fine with that, Meg?" The shock of having Jo's hands on her, the girl's red eyes staring right into her blue ones, and the soft warmth from the departing sun were making Meg wonder if they were having a moment. Then it hit her like a ton of bricks, that they were--indeed--having a moment. Her and stone-faced Jo were having a moment. She thought she would have keeled over in shock, but surprisingly, she was too caught up in her long-awaited moment that she could hardly look away from Jo.

"That's not fair to you. I don't want to be unfair to you. I just want you to know that…I think you deserve better than this, Meg." The hands on her shoulders clenched around her bare shoulders. They were warm, so warm, and with Jo so close Meg could smell her. She could smell all the scents that made up the other girl. Strong scents: gunpowder, the leather she used to holster her guns, and the soap she used to try and wash it all away. This was Jo, Jo's scents, Jo's calloused, warm fingers, Jo's beautiful eyes.

It didn't hit her fast enough that she was leaning forward in Jo's hold. She suspected that that had something to do with the whole being caught up in the moment thing and the way Jo didn't seem to be pushing her away, like she always did. And so, before she knew it, she was wrapping her arms around Jo and burying her nose in the other girl's neck, trying to get more of that smell, the really nice barely there smell that was buried under all the guns and violence. It was cool, like wind and Meg couldn't identify it even if she did know the exact name for it, but if there were that fitting name for it, Meg would have liked to think it would be called freedom.

Jo had stiffened up in her loose embrace and Meg knew that wasn't a good sign, but damn if she wanted to let go. Well, Jo would just have to tough it out and let her do this, surely the other girl had gone through worst situations. She didn't think that Jo could die because of a small hug, and anyway, she had hugged Jo as many times as she had been kidnapped. Oh jeez not a good comparison.

"Jo, I don't really understand what you're trying to tell me, but to tell you the truth, I don't care about any of that stuff. None of it ever mattered. The only thing that ever mattered…was…well…you, Jo."

She pressed herself further into Jo to demonstrate her point, a point that she had been trying to make for some years now, but was never given the chance.

The sun was losing its brilliance out to dusk, as the sky turned a dark, feathery pink that brushed against the heavens like a warm hand. A few bright stars were uncurling their luminance from behind clouds that seemed like melting cotton and Meg turning her stare directly to the faint fingernail moon in the sky watched a flock of birds wrinkle the glow as they passed in front, like a petal touching the surface of a pond.

Jo had her eyes closed and was breathing deeply, taking in the scents of the night, of Meg's hair pressed up close to her face. The drifting redolence of lilacs and vanilla, and the smells underneath all the sweetness: Nail polish, plastic, lipstick, leather, and the metal from the large gun she towed behind her. This was Meg, defined by her fragrance and the softness of her manicured fingers, and her stubborn touch.

Jo opened her eyes and looking down at Meg, she found herself pressing a kiss on the top of her red head. Meg lost within her own world of memory and sensory had startled awake. She could hear the chirp of cicadas and the cry of migratory birds as their flight carried them onward toward another star in the far away sky, but those weren't the things she was paying attention to. No. She was paying attention to the space between her and Jo and how with each passing breath how it seemed to get closer and closer, until…

"Meg, did you guys make up yet because I gotta go outside and you two are blocking the way out."

Meg turned her head sharply to the side, and spotted Amy, with her hands on her hips, at the top of the stairs, staring down at them in all her moment-killing glory. She turned her head back to Jo, and Jo was slowly getting up and pulling away from her.

NO!

She turned her head back up to glare at Amy, aka Moment-Killer as Meg was now going to dub her as, and she felt her left eye twitch as the brunette was fiddling with her hair, looking completely unapologetic for the murder she had just committed on Meg's love life.

"Did you two work things out?" Someone else was approaching the door and Meg could now make out Sei, the matronly features, somber with concern.

"Yeah, we're fine. It was nothing. Look, good as new." Meg now on a new mission to dispel the worries from Sei, pointed to herself, then Jo, her commenting as if on a broken machine instead of a human relationship.

Sei smiled warmly at them, like the big sister she was and Meg letting out a relieved breath suddenly felt like taking it back as Jo started for the door to the RV.

"Ah, Jo, ah where are you going? I thought"-

Jo turning from her vantage point on the top step met Meg's gaze for a brief second before breaking eye contact and going back inside.

Meg wasn't sure if she should follow or just wait things out, but one look from Sei seemed to confirm the latter in her head.

"Don't worry Meg, Jo's just…," Sei smiled warmly at her and Meg felt the burden in her chest buoy up like a gasping swimmer.

"Yeah, Meg, Jo's shy." Amy--Moment-killer, that name was going to stick--popped a gum ball in her mouth and then went forward with chewing noisily and obnoxiously for a good second or two until the flavor was gone. "I would have never guessed Jo could be so…," She blew a bubble the size of her face, popped it and started smacking away again, in a effort to finish her sentence, " so cute, huh?" She grinned and flew up the stairs to go harass any living creature within her vicinity. Kyouhei had better watch his ass.

Meg tried to comprehend fitting the word cute into the context of Jo. She pictured bunny rabbits, she pictured pink jump ropes, she pictured sweaters with panda bears on them and then she tried to fit Jo in this picture and it went along the lines of Jo using the bunny rabbits as target practice, Jo using the pink jump rope to strangle random bad guy, and Jo using the cute sweater as a rag to clean the barrel of her guns.

Cute, yeah right…more like sexy. At the thought, Meg giggled to herself stupidly and attempted to do away with the goofy expression smeared all over her face as she made her way into the RV, closing the door behind her.


	4. Knockout Girls

___"Dammit, watch where you goin' stupid bitch!"_

_"Oh man, we got here too late."_

_"So you wanna go see Lockbet or the other one that was showing later?_"

_"These jeans are really tight."_

Jo sweeping through the crowd with a hawk's eye scanned the area for her target, which she thought, wouldn't be too hard considering who it was. She didn't have much time left to meet up at the checkpoint, and so checking her watch, 19:00 on the dot; she walked out more into the open. It was a foolish thing to do, especially noting all the people scurrying and dallying about. A group of children on hover skates suddenly flew past in a flurry of garbage and leaves, knocking down a pedestrian and gaining some choice words from a few others that had witnessed the act. They chuckled about the shouts aimed their way and then skidded to wherever they had been headed, spray cans brandished in their snotty little hands like spoils of war.

There was somebody breathing down her neck, someone had knocked into her shoulder, and a baby was crying out in the distance. Jo taking out her headphones placed them on, and raised the volume to drown out the sounds and the drone of the loud speakers blasting announcements.

She walked out of the immediate crowd, moving toward her checkpoint, which had been decided on to be the extravagant water fountain in all it's Rococo glory at the Lazar Movie Complex. She didn't want to get wet, but seeing there were no nearby benches that weren't filled to the capacity with people, she found an edge on the fountain, and sat down quietly. She could --unfortunately-- still hear the sounds of the bustling crowd as it seeped past her headphones and picked at her nerves.

_"C'mon, c'mon, I ain't got all day."_

_"There's going to be that rave tonight at Chizuru's."_

_"Kawaii!"_

"Jo."

If she could still hear the voices of the crowd, then the music blasting through her earphones couldn't rightly be called heavy metal.

_"Check out the sound system they got rigged up there."_

Raising the volume, Jo stuffed her hands in her flight jacket and concentrated on the music filtering through her brain.

"Jo. Jo, hey is anybody home?" Snapping her attention away from the puddle near her feet that she had absently been staring at, Jo turned her inward focus outward to converge on the woman standing in front of her.

"What took you?" Jo flicking a stray white strand out of her face with a toss of the head, prepared to stand up and get on with business.

"Don't give me that. I had to look pretty. This is a date, after all." Meg, with the same toss of head came to stand beside Jo, slipping a hand around Jo's elbow and pulling until she got the other girl to her feet.

Jo rolled her eyes because she thought that Meg looked pretty everyday and that an hour wasn't going to change that fact. Although, watching her flutter around in her blue dress and white high-heeled shoes did make Meg look…different. Jo decided that it was a good difference right off the bat and apparently so did some guys who were walking by them.

Meg looked annoyed at the new sets of appraising eyes and suddenly turned her head sharply to the side, so she could block them out.

"I think you look nice." Different nice, she didn't look like everyday Meg, but she looked…

"Nice? That's it? C'mon Jo, that's something you'd say to your visiting grandma. Don't I look…?" Meg stopped her sentence, as if she wanted Jo to finish it, however some approaching guys did that honor.

"You are one sexy mama."

Jo thought those weren't exactly the words she had been searching for either, but she commended the idiot for trying.

"Woah." One of the guys had taken off his shades and was looking Meg up and down, noticeably stopping at her chest and legs that were mostly uncovered by the shortness of the dress.

Meg didn't look too happy about the attention.

The guy, who had spoken first was moving closer to them, his eyes traveling from Meg to her with a sneer.

"Who's this? Your boyfriend?"

Huh?

She turned to Meg, who suddenly looked like a beet, the color of her face matching her hair a little too much as she sputtered and moved in front of her.

"What? Jo's my…I…sorta my…," she then went even redder in the face and Jo looked the guy in front of her dead in the face.

"Oh my bad. Dude, that's a chick." The person in front of her started pointing at her and speaking, as if she didn't know what he was saying. She could understand the mix-up. She wasn't wearing her normal get-up. Meg had told her to go out and get something to wear that wasn't full of holes, or wasn't her normal clothes. She hadn't really understood what the point of that was, but she had gone along. She'd bought some jeans and thrown those on, but everything else was pretty much the same. She still wore her black tank top, and to hide that fact, she had thrown her gun jacket over it, not to mention she still wanted the ability to carry her guns around without alerting the nearest police station.

"Really?"

"Yeah, and up close like this, she's actually kinda hot."

That seemed to get Meg's attention, because before Jo could even blink, Meg had pushed the guy on the shoulder and away from their personal bubble.

"Man, if you say so."

The guy stumbled back a little and smiled smarmily at Meg. "Cut me some slack, honey. I didn't mean to upset you or your nice friend here."

The fire that usually burned in Meg was ignited and she shook her fist at the man with unconcealed rage. "I don't care, just get your ugly mug out of my face before I do something about it."

The two men turned to each other and suddenly burst into raucous laughter, alerting everyone within the area to their presence and the situation.

"She's feisty. I like her."

"Me too."

Jo narrowing her eyes because this was getting annoying and real fast, grabbed Meg by the arm, and pulled her to the entrance of the movie complex. They were going to miss the movie if they didn't hurry the hell up.

"Wait, wait. Where you goin? That's not nice."

She could always use her guns on them, but with the amount of civilians in the area, she would surely attract more attention and probably start a riot if she wasn't careful.

Suddenly one of the guys had jumped in front of her and really, no one could blame her for what she was now doing, because it was a reflex, an involuntary--well not so much--reaction to this stranger jumping in front of her. He had startled her a little, and she had reacted how she would normally react, when someone was dumb enough to get in her sights, when she was on edge and annoyed.

She broke his jaw.

Not her fault. Completely not her fault, even when the guy was rolling around on the ground and his friend was trying to calm him down.

Meg, who had witnessed the punch to the face --that had probably smashed some of this guy's teeth, and reduced his mouth to a bloody pit--was swiftly grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into the crowd.

Damn, this date was already in trouble.

"Ah, maybe we should go to another movie theater. This one seems a bit crowded. Right Jo?" Meg laughed anxiously and then picked up her pace, when she saw an officer breaking up the crowd.

"Yeah, let's get out of here. This place stinks anyway." Meg pulled on her wrist even harder, and soon they were down the sidewalk and cutting a fast retreat down the streets.

"Sorry Meg." It seemed like the thing to say, well other than, that guy completely deserved it, and did you see how much blood there was, or did you count how many teeth were scattered on the sidewalk. My all time best.

Yeah, Jo thought she had chosen the best response to this string of events. Well, something that wasn't going to cause Meg to sit on the sidewalk and cry, or shout at her.

"It's not your fault Jo. That guy deserved it." It was too bad she hadn't gone with her first choice, since Meg thought he'd deserved it too.

"Those guys were being mighty assholes and I thought you handled the situation…with finesse."

I didn't know you could break a guy's jaw with finesse.

"Where are we going now?"

Meg turned to her, like it was some sort of crime that she didn't know, "Where else, but the movie theaters."

"Well turn around then."

"Not that one, a better one."

By better, she had better mean quieter.

* * *

"Oh look, there it is." Meg was pointing to the old cinema building that had been losing business, ever since the new one had been built a couple of blocks away. It was a million times quieter than the other; it even kind of reminded her of a haunted house.

Jo took an immediate liking to the place.

So they bought their tickets, got popcorn, and had a nice time trying to pick out the perfect spot to watch the movie from. They practically had the entire place to themselves.

"Isn't this great? And we were thinking about going to that other one?"

She gave Meg a strange look, since she hadn't been the one to suggest where this date would take place, and Meg waved her off.

"It's starting, shush."

She gave Meg another strange look, because she wasn't the one who had been talking either.

The previews were boring and Jo wasn't expecting much from the movie after five minutes of dialogue. She had to remember that Meg was the one who picked it out, after all.

She nodded off twice, had Meg pinch her five times and yawned loudly once.

She couldn't say she was enjoying the movie without it sounding like a heinous lie, but she could say she was enjoying Meg's company, even though those pinches had stung a little. Watching the other girl smile, and laugh, and enjoy herself was enough, more than enough to keep her entertained, even if the movie did suck like glowing brains.

The couple in front of them was making out like they're lives depended on it, and Jo with an annoyed expression, kicked the chair because Meg was trying to watch the movie, and she didn't need them messing up the experience for her.

The couple broke apart, stared at them angrily and then moved.

Mission accomplished.

Meg turned to her and questioned her with a confused expression. She shrugged her shoulders.

Then halfway through the movie, she thought she had heard Meg yawn --well at least she wasn't the only one who thought the movie was boring--and then watching Meg through the corner of her eye, she could see the redhead stretch and place her hand on the back of her seat.

Meg looked at her, like she was checking something, and then turned away just as quickly.

They sat like this for a good portion of the movie, and Jo feeling the presence of the arm behind her head, grabbed onto it with one of her hands. It startled Meg, enough where she thought the other girl would fall out of her seat, luckily that hadn't been the case. The dark and the comfortable seats were again starting to wear her down and fixing Meg's arm around her shoulders, she was able to use it as a makeshift pillow as she curled close to her and nodded off.

Meg surprisingly hadn't said anything, and so she had woken up an hour later with a stiff neck and a blushing Meg.

All in all, Jo wouldn't mind going on one of these dates again in the near future. Actually she thought a small part of her was anticipating it.


	5. Firefly Kiss

The walk home was nice. Jo could tell Meg was in a good mood because the redhead was humming and gliding along the sidewalk like she didn't have a care in the world. Jo also felt herself in a good mood, but unlike Meg she didn't have a way to openly express it, so she just walked quietly alongside Meg, who was almost skipping to some unheard beat.

"Jo, this was really fun." Meg smiling brightly at her and blushing a little made a grab for her hand. "We should really do this again sometime." Meg with that luminous smile still gracing her eyes and mouth was now squeezing her hand and cuddling up to her. "How about…" The redhead paused for a quick breath and her eyes anxiously snapped shut for one second, like someone had fired a gun at her and she was closing her eyes against her oncoming death. "How about we go to the movies something later on in the week…or we could do something else, anything else. We could go to an amusement park." Meg let go another breath and the girl's grip in her hand felt clammy, like she was sweating. She turned to her quickly, and then she added, as if none of the things previously said mattered anymore, "Or whatever…" Meg left the comment hang in the air, the expression on her face no longer one of jubilance, but of worry, which Jo thought was kind of strange. What had Meg to be worried about?

She didn't want to go to an amusement park. Those were always crowded, and the last time she'd went to one, it had gone up in flames and she'd had to do battle with a gigantic…squid…octopus…tentacle beast…thing, that had ended up making a mess of Django and had curtailed her to waxing duty the following Saturday. That hadn't been much fun for her, but thinking back on that day, it hadn't all been a tragic mess. She'd been given the chance to confess to Meg the reasons she was so gung ho for battle, the exact reason why she jumped into combat so willingly, so blithely without a second thought to what may await her. Meg had looked shocked to hear that she was the reason, and Jo wasn't sure if she had done a good thing by telling Meg about her motivations. Well, not until Meg had rested her head on her shoulder and said she was happy to hear that. She'd been satisfied to hear those words from Meg, to know that Meg appreciated her efforts, that she liked having someone she could depend on, and someone who wouldn't abandon her when things turned rough.

Amusement parks though, plainly put she didn't want to go. She did, however, wanted another date. Meg was staring at her hopefully, her big, bright, teary, blue eyes unblinking and glittering at her with enough emotion to shame a pack of abandoned puppies and kittens in one go. Jo didn't know why, but she suddenly felt like…she didn't know how to put it, like she had messed up on a mission, really messed up bad.

She didn't know what to say to Meg, so she said the first thing that came to her, "I don't want to go to an amusement park." The look in Meg's eyes that had made Jo feel strange--and not good--intensified to the point where Jo had to turn away. This obviously wasn't going too good for her.

"You don't want to go?" Meg's voice got really tiny and Jo not knowing why, felt like someone had hit her in the gut. Jo thought that this wasn't the way Meg should be reacting, especially since Jo did want to go on that second date. Why were they misunderstanding each other? Maybe she wasn't being clear. "I do want to go."

The sparkle in Meg's tear-gleamed eyes suddenly vanished, blotted out like a star in the night, and the redhead was now giving her a questioning look. "So you do want to go to the amusement park?"

Jo in return gave her a baffled look because that's not what she had said. "No."

Meg's hand was now on her hips and the confused expression was slowly mutating into irritation. "Jo, make up your mind. I thought we got over that whole mixed messages crap."

Mixed what? Jo couldn't help but scratch her head at this turn of events, and if there was one thing she hated it was being thrown for a loop. She understood that she didn't have the best track record at figuring people out, if anything she was pretty lousy at it. She could figure out a battle situation without blinking an eye, but she just didn't have enough…what had Amy said…she didn't have enough commonsense to figure out people, especially the people that mattered. She thought that maybe it was because her memories were lost to her, buried under the beach sand and water of NYC, or maybe even further into her past, a place where she couldn't even glimpse. She just couldn't fully grasp the concept of emotions, other people's emotions of happiness, and fear, and sadness…

She could understand happiness because those were often shown in the way someone walked, or someone smiled, or in the way they treated others. Fear she could see in others, but it was lost to her because she didn't understand what those people had to fear. Every time a bullet was shot her way, every time Django was in the heat of battle, she felt alive and…satisfied. Maybe, that's why she couldn't be afraid, because her happiness lay in the fact that she was protecting Meg every time she picked up her gun. Every time she was shot at and put in danger. And the word sadness was only a word to her without an ounce of understanding or recognition.

She knew she lacked things, basic things that people needed in order to be…people, and she knew, intrinsically that those empty shells within her, were exactly what made her so adept at handling a gun, and taking on missions.

They were coming closer to the trailer, all they had to do now was turn the corner and it would be in sight. Meg's pace was picking up and she was walking past her, not even bothering to hide her anger and hurt.

"Meg, is something wrong?"

They were now in front of the trailer and Meg whirling on her like a tornado, began to yell, "Obviously Jo! So if you'll excuse me." She rudely shook her head, her long ponytail snapping like a cobra in the air as she made her way past Jo. Jo however wasn't ready to concede defeat, or confusion, and grabbing the shorter girl by the wrist she stopped her.

"I haven't done anything wrong. Why are you being like this?"

Meg was now fitfully attempting to remove her captured wrist from her fingers and Jo not ready to see the back of the door tightened her grip. Meg winced and then shutting her eyes, she ripped her hand away, and in a voice full of hurt and anger she said, "It's because you don't want to go on a date with me. That's why Jo. I'm sorry if I can't act normal. It's just how I feel. I'm not like you, Jo, no one is, we can't all have fun being alone, eating, and sleeping, and breathing, and touching loneliness…"

Meg was crying and Jo felt the overwhelming emotion that didn't have a name well up inside of her like an overflowing glass of water. She also felt a little irritated because Meg was completely misunderstanding her again.

"I never said I didn't want to go on another date."

Meg, who was still crying quite loudly and messily had suddenly, as her words dawned on her stopped. "Wha?" She was now trying to wipe her eyes dry without messing up her mascara and eyeliner and in the process failing miserably. "Jo?" Her voice sounded cracked and she was still trying to wipe the tears from her eyes as she turned her clear, bright eyes on her.

"I don't want to go to an amusement park, but I do want another…date."

Meg's eyes were wide with surprise, and the girl not completely conscience of what she was doing, came up to her and hugged her tightly. "Really? You want to"-she pointed at herself-"With me?"

What was wrong with Meg? Why was she sounding so surprised? There obviously wasn't anyone else in the vicinity that would warrant this type of confusion over who she had asked on a date. Meg was the only person around. She didn't need to point to herself.

"Yes." She didn't have anything else to say. Meg didn't seem to have anything to say either and it was then that Jo noticed that the redhead was much closer than she had remembered, and steadily as seconds passed, growing closer. Lips touched her mouth, like a butterfly delicately landing on the skin there, and she could suddenly smell Meg. The sweet perfume and the lipstick smudged over her lips. It smelled like apples.

The pressure on her mouth was firmer, the kiss no longer trembling and fluttering like that captured butterfly, but now a definite presence. She breathed in without meaning to and Meg suddenly leaned into her, her mouth warm, softer than anything Jo had ever felt, and moving. Harder. There was the moist press of something on her bottom lip and Jo feeling heated, like she had just run through a burning building, or fought a long battle, put her hands on both of Meg's shoulder to steady herself. The pressure on her mouth was pushing, and Jo was completely baffled at this disorienting sensation that Meg was giving her. She'd seen it done of course, in movies that she'd watched. The ones where men would save women and a kiss would ensue. Meg watched those kind of movies too, except Jo's differed in that both man and woman after the kiss had ended would both be dead, preferably mutilated by monsters, or psychopathic killers. That's what they got for turning their backs on an enemy with a ten-foot spear.

Jo had closed her eyes at first, but now remembering the images of mutilating monsters and psychopathic killers, who seemed to like to sneak up on unsuspecting couples opened her eyes wide and peeked around her. She couldn't focus though, she couldn't even breathe properly and if it was even possible, Meg's mouth had gotten even softer. Jo, who hadn't been doing anything but letting Meg kiss her, closed her eyes again and thought that if she had to suffocate and die from lack of oxygen, then this was one hell of a way to go.

Meg slipped away from her then, and Jo could feel her breath and touch shift slightly back, her warm hands now lingering by her hands. Slowly opening her eyes, Meg came into view, her face flushed and smiling. She beamed at her and Jo in the mean time was trying to wrap her brain around what had just happened. That had been…

She looked at Meg and then down at their hands, their fingers skimming along the backs of each other's hands and Jo exploring the remaining warmth of the kiss by way of her fingertips against her lips and her tongue in one sweep. The taste of it was still lingering, the scent of apples, so strong and warm that she could taste it in the scent. She could taste it on her mouth, from the traces of lipstick that had smudged over the corners of her mouth and bottom lip.

She was still entranced, even when Amy burst through the trailer door and started talking, "Finally, you guys came back. I thought you'd died out there or something." She exasperatedly threw her hands up in the air and then looking back and forth between the pair noticed the strange wave of quietness that had descended.

"What's wrong with you two, you look like you seen a ghost, or Kyouhei naked." She snickered at that, and then she was coming down the stairs to take a closer look. Amy also noticed that upon her entrance, Meg hadn't predictably yelled at her to get lost. Something had to be up.

Jo was looking kind of dazed and her mouth, what the hell…? Had dark burgundy smudges on it…she looked at Meg and seeing that her lipstick was smeared, a blush still rising over the bridge of her nose and the two of them rather close…

Damn, it didn't take a genius to figure out what the hell was going on here--even if she was one--A blind monkey could deduce by all the sloppy evidence that these two had obviously been…

"Ohhhhh, someone got luckyyyyy! I'm gonna tell Sei." Before Meg could even say anything, and Jo could rightly come out of her coma-like state, Amy was up the stairs and closing the door behind her.

What the…

Oh crap!

"Amy, you nosy midget, get back here before I use those expensive cables in your room to choke you to death. You brat!" And before Meg could even help herself, she was up the stairs as well and noisily clambering after the smallest member of their group.

Jo was still standing there dumbfounded and touching her mouth. She could hear loud shouting from inside, the clash of something breaking and the screams of Kyouhei as he most likely was caught up in the crosshairs of whatever atrocities was going on inside.

She stood out there in the cool wind of the night, the moon cutting an arc against the sky and stars, and for the entire world, looking like a leaf adrift on an easy stream journeying toward the conclusion of a waterfall.

The noises inside were still in full swing and when she heard a wince-inducing shriek from Kyouhei, Jo thought she was about ready for some alone time. Walking around the back of the massive trailer, where Django was being stored, Jo climbed the ladder to get to the roof. She made herself comfortable, lying on her back and watching the stars blink and twitter in the impartial sky that held them in place.

It was nice to be up here, but Jo thought she would have much rather Meg with her, right at this moment. She had actually wanted to make some arrangements for their date, but Meg had run off so quickly and she had not been too collected at the time to stop her. It could be that all of this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe she could think much more rationally about where she would like to go for this…date that she had been promised. But where?

On the edge of her peripheral, Jo could see something glow iridescently, it bobbed twice, up and down, before steadying itself enough to cross her.

A firefly? Here? In crowded, smoggy, neon-dizzy Tokyo?

The radiance now seen from the front and not smeared with the glare of the lamplight and the corner of her eye was now a soft leaf color. Jo holding up her hand found the small bulb of glowing light gradually decreasing from a beryl color and then deepening back to emerald shades. It circled her finger twice, before hovering away to destinations unknown.

Jo shook her head at the resemblance it had to the fireflies from the world she had been trapped in, and suddenly her mind was flashing with images of the lone samurai and the fight that had taken place on that moon lit lake.

He was pretty awesome, considering he didn't carry around guns, and proper equipment to carry out a fight. That had deserved true respect, both his blade, his craftsmanship of his skill and the man, silent and honorable.

She had surely never run across such a person as him, and something within her had been affected. She had turned curious and asked him many questions, wanted to learn things, his pain, his past, his future…

It was weird for her to take such an interest in someone and she suspected it had partially something to do with the way she had entered the world, and her strange behavior previous. She had learned to forget that incident because if there was one thing she had learned upon becoming this mercenary of justice, it had been to wipe your mind clean of distractions that didn't have anything to do with the here and now, even that strange person that had commanded that cybot. They were nothing but a hindrance if not forgotten.

That samurai though…and those swords had been very interesting, and she had wondered, ever since, in the secret back of her mind, if it would be ever possible to see a place, an era like that again. It had gnawed at her for the night that she had returned. She had felt so at peace in that place, so at home, and she wondered for a funny second if she had been born in the wrong era…

What would it be like to be a samurai? What would it be like if she wielded a katana instead of the Desert Eagles? She was curious and that was something that she rarely ever felt toward anything, but she didn't think anything was wrong with a bit of curiosity, after all curiosity had killed the cat, not the gun toting angel.

Which got her to thinking, maybe Meg's date and her curiosity could both be sated in one go. Maybe if she got Meg to agree they could go somewhere that involved…Samurais. Hmm…that would take some thought; maybe she should ask Sei where she could take Meg on a date.

Jo sitting up made her way down from the roof and to the front door. She entered the living room to find it empty and quiet, Jo assumed everyone had retired to her quarters for the night and so it wouldn't be too much trouble to sneak into Sei's room unnoticed and ask the woman some questions in private.

Sei's room wasn't that far from the cockpit and sneaking down the corridor, she knocked on the door and asked the woman if she could come in. Sei was gracious and let her in, but not without a knowing smile and look that spoke volumes of what she already knew of why this afternoon's shouting fest took place.

"So what can I do for you Jo?" Sei was sitting on her bed, already out of her work clothes and into silk pajamas.

"I need some advice." Jo instead of looking at Sei was busy glancing around the room in order to get a better picture of their enigmatic boss. There were books scattered everywhere, and hanging on the walls were exotic Chinese tapestries, the largest one painted with the majestic symbol of the Bai-Lan organization, the black and golden dragon. There were also scrolls and a large Chinese Broadsword secured firmly to the wall. Jo looking at the sword thought maybe she had made the right choice in coming to the older woman.

Sei, as if reading her mind, or more accurately reading her line of sight, asked her if it had anything to do with her sword collection. Jo didn't feel like beating around the bush so she just came right out and said it.

"Where do you think I should take Meg on a date?" That had surely gotten a reaction from the silent woman. She started, "It flatters me that you would come to me for this Jo, but I believe your judgment would be best…since you are indeed the one taking Meg out. I don't know Meg as well as you do."

Jo shook her head at her, "That not it…I have an idea on what I'd like to do." Sei nodded her head for her to go on, "I want to check out a battlefield."

Out of all the reactions she had been expecting out of the older woman, confusion hadn't been one of them, maybe because she believed Sei to be a very competent source of information. "Jo," Sei blinked at the younger girl and then took a deep breath, "I don't know how to tell you this, but _you_ should be the last person to inquiry about this sort of thing. I mean…" Sei blinked dumbly at her some more, "Just last week we came from a battlefield…and I'll excuse myself if I'm sounding presumptuous, but I don't think Meg will like that kind of date. Not when it's her line of work."

Jo staring at the older woman strangely turned her attention back to the Chinese sword hanging on the wall. "Not anything in Tokyo…or anywhere near here." Sei could tell that her younger friend was trying very hard to explain herself and so giving her the full attention she deserved, she sat up straighter. "Have you ever seen a battlefield where…" she stopped and then one side of her mouth twitched up, not in a smirk, but something more thoughtful, "there are no guns, or people shooting each other in the back. A respectable battlefield…something with…"

Sei nodded her head; she now understood where Jo's thoughts were, "With swords. I see, Jo," Jo turned to her and she smiled at the younger girl, "That alternate dimension that you had been thrown into, would you like to visit someplace like that?" When Jo had explained what kind of place she had been trapped in some weeks ago, Sei couldn't help but feel that the girl held a certain fondness for the place. Back then, it had struck her as odd, Jo was so apathetic toward everything, and when she had talked about this place, that had sounded like it had come right out of a Musashi era motion picture with an inflected tone--and not her usual dry voice--it had made her and everyone else sitting at the table raise some questioning eyebrows.

Now that she thought about it, it did make sense for Jo to take a liking to such a place. It was quiet, remote, meditative, honorable, and had battles that actually had challenged her. Sei, very much remembering the detailed depiction the rest of them had gotten on the quiet, lone swordsman who had drawn his sword at lighting speeds.

"Jo, I could think of several places that would fit that description, but the one that comes to mind immediately would be Sekigahara."

"Sekigahara?" Sei had to remember that just last year, Jo had come from New York and she wasn't so affluent in Japanese history.

"Just think of it as the battlefield of all battlefields…" Sei didn't know any other way how to simplify it, without having to go through the complex war history of the Japanese people, that would surely have Jo at the end of her explanation pulling her guns on her. She just had to keep it short and sweet.

Jo nodded her head, and Sei for good measure added, "It's in the Gifu prefecture…by the Alps Mountains, so if your expedition to the ultimate battlefield isn't satisfying," Jo didn't look too thrilled about that assumption as Sei noticed, so she quickly added, "Of course I doubt that, but just in case, they have one of the most famous hot spring towns in all of Japan. Meg will love it."

"Which one?" Jo looked conflicted now, "The hot springs or the battlefield?"

Sei avoiding Jo's direct stare, coughed in her palm, "Anyway, I've been thinking that we all need a vacation, and Gifu sounds perfect. I, of course will have to borrow more funds from my grandfather, but I don't think he will mind too much, considering you saved the organization face during the Black Lotus' coup."

Jo shrugged her shoulder nonchalantly, and Sei could tell that the girl was still trying to figure out if Meg would like the idea.

"Okay." Jo got up and walking toward the door without even a backwards glance was out the door and making her way to her room. Sei looked at the door for a couple of seconds, before she shook her head and switched off the lights to go to sleep.


	6. Nosebleed

"Man, this field is huge." Meg said impressed, her arms spreading themselves out as if to contain the massiveness of the land.

Jo stooping over the green grass and passing one hand over it, hovering over places where the grass pushed up brown and crisp blades, where the grass was barren and smelled dirt. "I can still smell the blood." Jo said. Meg, who was still blown away by the vast land and air around her--growing up in city would do that to you--turned to Jo with a disgusted expression.

"Jo, what are you talking about? I don't smell anything, but grass and the smoke from that barbecue place we passed on the way here," Meg rubbed her stomach, "And the wind sure isn't helping by blowing the smell over here. Man, I'm so hungry."

A quiet family with a picnic basket was walking by; they all had their heads bowed and their faces solemn in the afternoon's cloudy skies.

Meg and Jo watched them go along and Meg had hoped her stomach wouldn't make any noise and disrupt the family's shared contemplation. Sekigahara was a sacred place after all, many brave soldiers, many brave men had died here and many people had come here to pay respects and homage, even after four centuries. As the couple and their two sons passed, the air was filled with black tension, the type that would collect at funerals and Meg was afraid that she would embarrass herself--and Jo--in front of the procession.

Jo nudged her in the arm, and with a deep and quiet voice-- that could be easily lost by the moist wind-- told her to relax. She replied vexingly that she couldn't relax. There was a certain etiquette that was to be abided by when people came to places like this. Jo gave here a strange look for that and Meg feeling herself blush profusely, said that Sei had told her how to behave.

Likewise, Jo said because Sei had also stopped her on her way to the door this morning and told her to behave like a…young lady, i.e. do not bring guns or just bring one, and when someone was getting on your case, for the love of God, do not sucker punch that person and then walk away without calling an ambulance.

Jo hadn't agreed to any of the status quo expected of her by the older woman. She hadn't even given a terse nod or a simple ok, by way of placation. She had only walked out of the door because Meg had been waiting for her outside. Sei had taken that for an agreement that she would follow all conditions and Jo had let her believe that. Of course, she still brought her guns--yes two of them, no need for restraint--and she still planned to punch or kick or break bones or all of the above if someone was being a royal douche to Meg or her. That was just a gimme, but the date so far hadn't required any of those things from her. It had just been quiet and relaxing and…fun.

They'd visited a sword smith on their way to Sekigahara and Jo had finally understood the saying _"kid in a candy store"_ or better translated, _"Meg in a candy store."_ Gifu had once been known for its sword working and Jo, highly interested, thought that it would give her an excuse to buy a new weapon.

Sei had never said anything about not buying some _souvenirs. _So when she asked the old sword smith if he had ever tried to weld one of the small swords onto a…hmm…let's say a semi-automatic, gas operated pistol, and then had pulled out her Desert Eagles from the holsters, and then pointed to where she thought the wakizashi he was currently working on would best fit, she was quite certain that this was the perfect souvenir to take back to Tokyo with her.

The sword smith looked like he thought her idea of hybrid sword/gun was a very interesting combination, and they both, for about fifteen minutes talked about the details that would go into making this dream weapon a reality.

Meg had pulled her away by the hand, and told her that something like that sounded really, ridiculously expensive, and why the hell do you need more weapons when you have your Desert Eagles, Jango, and yourself. Plus, the money Sei had given her to hold onto--a wise choice now that Meg thought in retrospect--and that if they wanted to eat today, Jo would have to find it within herself to do without her sword/gun combination.

Jo shook her head in understanding and then went on to ask her if she could still get the wakizashi, and since it was between a katana and a knife, it wouldn't be cumbersome and hard to carry around.

Meg had promptly dragged her out of the store and apologized to the sword smith.

Jo made a promise to herself that when this date was over, and Meg was happy with her, and she had secured another of these dates that she would go see Sei about a weapon's modification and get the funds to come back here.

They had spent a couple of hours at the Sekigahara battlefield. Visiting the shrines, listening to the stories, walking around the fields and breathing in the air, and finally succumbing to the smells coming from the barbecued pork at the restaurant by the entrance.

"Ready to go yet, or do you want to stay for a bit?"

"No, let's go. I need to talk to Sei about something?"

* * *

They'd reached the small inn that they were staying at by cab and went straight to Sei's and Amy's room.

"Oh, you two are back. How was your date?"

Amy chiming in from her place on her bed, teddy bear laptop open and buzzing as her fingers sliced over the keyboard, said, trying to sound as obnoxious as possible, "Yeah, how was your dateeeee?" Her smile turned predatory and Meg coming over to the smaller girl bobbed her on the head.

"None of your business. I'll tell you when you get older." Amy's eyes widened, and then she was giggling into her palm and winking conspiratorially at Meg, who was winking back as well.

Jo didn't understand this kind of behavior and turning to Sei had told her the date was nice and that she wanted some minor modifications on her guns.

Sei, looking at Jo questioningly, didn't know if she should ask about what gun modifications and her date had in common, or just slowly back away from the room.

"Hey we were just thinking about going to that Onsen town up in the mountains. I mean if you come to Gifu, it's a must." Amy waving her finger in the air suddenly pointed it at Sei. "Let's go now!" She was bouncing on her knees on the bed and Amy who was also sitting next to her, looked excitedly at the older woman. "Can we Sei? Can we? Oh that would be so much fun!"

Sei couldn't say no to those faces and in all about a second had told them, "Alright, if you girls go get your bathing suits, then we can go."

There was loud clapping and then a mutual shout of 'yeah' coming up from the two girls on the bed as they scampered off to find their bathing suits. Jo was still standing by the door and seeing the expression of joy on her companion's faces, went to go look for her bathing suit as well.

* * *

"Look at how many hot springs there are. Look!" Meg pointed at the many bamboo divisions that circumscribed off the onsens. Tugging on her arm and pulling her along as they walked down corridor, the concrete ground cold under their feet and the air clammy with steam and the freezing winds from the Alps.

"They say this is quite the experience, the cold air from the mountains and the hot steam and that there effect relaxes the body even further." Sei pulled the small towel tighter to herself as it began to slip.

"Hey Sei, couldn't you get a bigger towel? It's probably the same size as mines." Amy made a lifting motion with her hand in the direction of Sei's chest and the towel, and Sei blushing pink, tried her best to cover herself.

Jo had opted to put on her black bathing suit, the hassle of hanging onto a flimsy towel not all that appealing to her. Meg had gone the same route as Sei and Amy and was currently sporting one of hot spring's small towels. It wasn't unusual to see Meg in small bits of clothing, if anything, it would have been weird to see her in something that actually covered her up. That was just how Meg was, that was just how she liked to wear her clothing, and Jo had seen enough midriff, high skirts and cleavage to last her a lifetime. It was normal, but what wasn't normal, Jo decided, was that suddenly the short cut of the towel and the fact that half of Meg's chest was sticking up from her towel was…starting to…distract her.

Really distract her.

She chalked it up to having nothing better to do. Since there were no bad guys to concentrate on and take out, or her television hadn't been brought with her.

Meg oblivious to the state of her dress, bickered back and forth with Amy wildly, the one hand not used to hold up the towel waving around in the air and making her scantily clad state even more apparent, especially with all the movement…

Jo had nearly ran into a bamboo poll, luckily for her, Sei had grabbed her arm before any real damage could occur, like for instance, on her pride.

"Is something the matter Jo, you seem, out of it?"

"Nothing." Jo brushed off the gentle hand on her shoulder and Sei not taking offense--because that was just how Jo was--let the girl go without any further questioning. Jo's stare still focused on Meg tried to figure why she had this uncontrollable fascination with watching the red head. She could admit that Sei was just as anatomically…filled out as Meg was, even more so than Meg and yet, Jo took a sidelong glance at the older woman, Sei didn't hold her fascination one bit. She was pretty, Jo understood the qualifications that determined beauty in this society on a woman, had seen enough of Meg's magazines and seen billboards to know what people found desirable. Sei held all those attributes and then some. Judging her and Meg by unbiased standards, by other opinions and by observations of the two out in the city, Sei was more attractive to men than Meg was. Jo could see that, and she had no problem with admitting that Sei's maturity and elegance were things that seemed to take on tangible substance in the older woman's looks, unlike Meg who was immaturity personified and that most likely turned a lot of people away.

Even so, ask her a million times over, and Jo knew her answer would be the same, if someone were to ask her which she preferred, which she thought was beautiful and irresistible and just amazing. Meg was all of those things and Jo was relieved that the people around her weren't privy to the qualities of Meg that made her so special. If that were the case, then there would definitely be stiff competition for the red head and Jo didn't think she would be able to take them out fast enough with just the aid of her guns…though Django would definitely have no problem wiping them out. Jo couldn't help but think that these concerns were somehow a question on her morals system and that she should seriously consider her values if she wanted to continue to stand for justice and the right way as a Cybot pilot. The situation of what if playing through her consciousness--Meg's safety or the safety of random, innocent citizens of Tokyo--Which one was more important? Of course she would choose Meg without a second thought and let the citizens die…which now that she thought about it…seemed a little selfish, but whatever…It was her choice to make and no one else, and she would just have to pray that Sei never asked her this question because she didn't feel like lying and she sure as hell didn't feel like getting Django taken away.

Upon reaching the end of the corridor, Sei opened a bamboo gate and walked into the onsen, Amy hot on her heels and already throwing herself into the hot water with a loud splash and a sqee. Amy and her were standing awkwardly by the gate and Sei dipping her legs into the water smiled at them.

"You know, there's another empty onsen on the side of us. Why don't you two go make yourselves comfortable over there." Sei knowingly waved them away and smiled that motherly smile that made everything okay. Amy who was now splashing and trying to doggy paddle her way over to the other side of the large hot spring shouted at the pair, "Yeah go over there. There's not enough room here for Meg's fat head and fat butt." She cackled at her words and Jo wondered how a little girl managed to make such a scary sound. Meg face flaming more than her hair, whipped her fists at the smaller girl. "My head is not fat! And my butt"- She turned and looked at the rear end in question- "My butt is not fat! You brat!" She threw up her hands like they were on fire and then said, "C'mon Jo, let's go, before we get Amy's cooties on us." This comment was followed by Meg sticking her tongue out at the younger girl and stomping back down the corridor. Jo followed after her, and heard the call for her and Meg to be careful and to be good.

"My butt is not fat." Meg still stuck on this one thought, turned to her and asked, "Jo, do you think my butt's fat." Jo caught off guard by this, stared at the red head for a while. Meg was looking at her as if she really wanted an answer and Jo simple gave her a…

"No."

Meg watched her like a hawk and when Jo didn't volunteer a further explanation to why she didn't think Meg's posterior was fat; the red head took her reticence as something else.

"Jo thinks my butt is fat." Jo didn't get how Meg could come to this conclusion, when she had just not even a second ago had said otherwise. "I don't diet or anything, but maybe…" She looked at Jo with a pleading look, "Would you like me better if I was skinnier Jo? Huh?"

Huh?

Jo was silent again, because she didn't know how to answer this question without it turning out like the previous one.

They were entering into an unused onsen and Meg shutting the tall gate behind her, looked like she was still waiting for an answer.

How was she going to answer this? She didn't even think it was a fair question, since it was kind of vague to her. It was an objective question. People had different taste, what one might consider fat, one might consider skinny, or even unhealthy. It was dependent on many factors: height, age, metabolism…and really the only time Jo considered someone had a weight problem was if their body weight kept them from carrying out a gunfight with her.

Meg wasn't fat…that was easily seen by the fact that she could keep up with her in a gunfight. "You're not…fat."

"Hey, why do you sound so damn hesitant?"

Jesus Crap. It was like she couldn't win with her.

"I don't understand what you're talking about? What does being fat have to do with anything?" Jo moved to go into the hot spring and Meg still holding onto her towel opened her mouth, only to close it again.

Jo continued, "I mean, Amy has called you many names and you have never asked me if you were stupid, or ugly, or have rocks in your head, or needed medical attention, or if there really is a tape worm in your stomach?" Jo finished her sentence as she submerged her whole body into the water and leaning back, she watched Meg who had opened her mouth again to say something.

"I…well…it's different." Meg clutched her towel harder and dipping one foot into the water, began to lean her weight on it and enter into the hot spring. She took a seat next to Jo and then stared out at the other side of the onsen, silent as a mouse and still looking like she wanted to say something.

She blurted out, "It's different from that stuff. Amy's just being a brat and I know those things aren't true. Or I'm not really…too self conscious about them." Her fingers were now treading through the water, rivulets dripping from her palm as she lifted it and dipped it back into the water.

Jo turning her attention to her companion, was about to say something, but got easily sidetracked when she noticed that Meg's towel had slipped down and disappeared. The steamy water was more than covering her in the chest department, but it was still really…

"Sorry, I guess I'm not making any sense."

…Distracting.

So distracting that she was still looking at Meg's chest, and Meg unaware of where her eyes were looking at, continued to stare forward quietly. Jo gulped, turned away, and then wondered if this had anything to do with the fact that they had shared a kiss two days ago.

She'd seen Meg naked before, although this past year, as Meg had started to exchange her adolescent body for something else--as Jo tried not to stare exactly at that…something else--the other girl had stopped changing her clothes around her, and it seemed to Jo, started being more…secretive. She didn't know about what exactly, but it was there and Jo trusted her instincts enough to know secrets existed between them.

She could suddenly hear Meg breathing, the sound, even quiet was raspy and…

Jo looking up at the sky, like her solution existed somewhere between the clouds, contemplated what all of this might mean for her. She liked Meg…a lot and she cared for her and somewhere underneath her reservations and her quiet; there existed a binding emotion that secured them together, like unwilling participants in the arena of their lives. It was deep, and heavy and moved her inexplicably to actions that she would never have thought herself capable of doing, putting forth effort, or breaking from her accustomed habits.

An emotion that coexisted with her twisted view of the world, and yet was not tainted by it, or wasn't that affected that it needed complete sheltering from her.

She could have laughed a little at the realization, but it would attract Meg's attention, and then she would find herself attracted by something else, something in Meg's eyes and her body and her voice and her love.

It answered her back, like a chorus of angels, and before Jo could stop herself she was reaching her hand out to her, placing it near her collarbone, and sliding it up her neck, where the pulse had quickened and beat against her fingertips. She leaned in and Meg stunned by her actions and mouth open didn't object to her kissing her. Had melted at the first touch of lips and gone perfectly still like a flower after a storm. It took a couple of seconds for Jo to realize that this wasn't going to be anything like their first kiss, and wrapping her arms around the other girl, she crushed her up against her body. Her body was acting on its own, fighting the awkwardness that would come from her, because she wasn't experienced in this sort of thing, not in this type of contact and this kind of overwhelming touch. Meg's mouth was just as soft as she remembered, and the skin of her back, of where her spine dipped down and flared out into her wide hips was tender, supple, and slippery with the water, and Jo was scared that she was being too aggressive. That Meg wouldn't like it this way.

Meg made a tiny sound in the back of her throat, passed her hand over her side, where her ribs met her back and held her there. It tickled, felt like the wind was running up her sides, whimsical and lovely, and she made a disgruntled noise at the fact that she couldn't find a way to kiss Meg deeper.

She could feel the warmth of Meg's chest through her bathing suit, the press of it as it moved and all that supple skin, especially the flesh on the side of her breast, softer than anything she had ever felt, andrubbing her arm and making her stomach flip and clench.

She'd grabbed her then, pulled until Meg was in her lap, and the weight of her was concentrated there. She was heavy, slightly heavier than her, but Jo couldn't say that she minded, not when she had held up weightier people and thrown them across a room, and especially not when Meg deliciously squirmed in her lap, the friction against Meg's chest making her nipples harden and nudge the skin under her collar bone.

She'd taken a hold of her then, hadn't considered what would happen if she did, but in the blur of imminent pleasure it didn't seem important. The breast in her hand was a firm, supple mound and her fingers squeezed, curiosity and desire caught in a silken web of Meg's long red hair, as she buried her face in her neck and waited for the other girl to stop arching and shaking.

Meg was moaning now, loud and unfettered, and the sound of it had Jo moving her mouth on the other girl, until she had her mouth fastened on one of her nipples and was sucking it fiercely. Her hands which were holding up the red head, one on her back, steadily pushing her forward into her mouth, while the other was moving to settle on one of the girl's thighs. To rub it under her palm and feel it quiver under her touch.

Meg's moans were getting louder with each flick of her tongue against her nipple, and the tear of nails raking down her back, made her suddenly jump. Meg shrieked as her lips clamped down tighter and it was then that Jo heard it, the sound of feet on the other side of the gate.

"Is everything all right in there?" Someone was banging on the gate and trying to get it open. Meg leaning her head back now, as she came back from whatever high she had been on, made a surprised squawk as her arms slipped from Jo's shoulders, slippery from steam and she fell backwards in the water.

A man walked in, and Jo sitting there quietly as Meg was flailing about and trying to right herself, wondered what the hell this bastard wanted that he would interrupt them…like that.

"My god, are you two alright? I heard someone scream and I thought that"- He had finally caught the death glare that she was giving him and he on some instinct that was buried within his stupid head, backed away a little.

Meg finally up and not choking on water, her face red and her towel lost somewhere blinked at him stupidly. "Oh…ah…that was…you see…" she breathed, "I saw this huge…spider and that's why I…um…yelled." Meg blushed crimson at the mention of her scream and then was looking everywhere except her and the other man.

Jo collaborated, "Huge…" she turned to leer at Meg because there was something undeniably funny and sexy about this whole situation, "The spider, that is."

Meg blushed and laughed and she'd stupidly snorted some water up her nose.

The man, having worked at this place for some months, could never, ever remember having run across a spider. It was always the dead of winter here and a...spider?

"Okay, well, I'll leave you two ladies to enjoy your bath, and if…the spider comes back, then call me, and I'll kill it for you." He smiled at the two of them.

Jo didn't smile back, just looked bored and narrowed her eyes at him, her voice mocking and biting as if she was taunting some enemy, "Yeah, we'll call you if we see that…_spider_ again."

For some reason, he didn't think that they were talking about the spider anymore. "Well if you'll excuse me."


	7. Storybook Fairytale

One year ago, when money was hard to come by, and the gang was barely scrounging up something to eat, I'd made a promise to myself.

That we would get through this.

I would take care of them. I'd make sure, as the oldest, that nothing would ever hurt them. I'd make sure that whatever trouble found them, or whatever trouble they found, I would shield them from it.

Put myself between them and the bullet if necessary, because I felt like that was something expected of me. It was my duty to be that for them, to be a big sister and a sort of mother for them.

We were all orphans. Unwanted. Unneeded by a society that was falling apart around our feet and didn't need any more burdens, any more charity cases cluttering up its mailboxes.

If there was one thing I hated, it was charity. I didn't want anyone to feel sorry for these kids, because they were all strong, so strong-willed and proud that it would be a slap in the face for anyone of them to get pity from some random stranger.

People looking in on our lives, they couldn't fathom what we went through. They didn't understand us, or our way of thinking, and for those reasons, I didn't want to take their charity money. I didn't want their sympathy. We didn't want their sympathy, because we all might be a couple of good for nothing urchins, but dammit, we all had pride.

And so, we stole, we tricked those random strangers, not into giving us their money, but parting with it. We weren't going to be some charity case. No, we would get money on our own terms and from bastards that didn't deserve all the money they had.

I remember laughing so hard the first time we pulled the wool over some mean, old, coot's eyes. He never saw it coming. And I remember how good we ate that night with the money we earned. Yes, _earned_. It might have sounded like I was trying to pull the wool over those kids and my own eyes with pretty words like _earned_, but that's what I deemed it as. The streets we grew up on, the place we lived, people might call it a city, but I didn't think of it that way. It was a jungle, a huge concrete jungle, with skyscrapers as trees and people as insects, infesting and preying upon each other. Money didn't belong to people who worked for it, no; it belonged to people who could hold onto it, and those people that we took it from, well, all I had to say to them was losers' weepers.

We all felt that way.

Those kids. We might not be related by blood, but I'd like to think we were brought together by something even stronger. I'd like to think we were brought together by animal's instinct, that we were creatures that could hold each other up, could support and fight for each other.

They might have been small, but each of them had such spirit. Such determination to continue living, just like me.

Dorothy. What a spitfire. I knew the first time I met her that when she grew up, she would be breaking hearts left and right. She reminded me of myself at that age, all spunk and regrettably nothing else. She had smarts though, but it was hidden under all that attitude. She was a peacock, colorful feathers puffed up and angry, without so much as decent beak to back it up.

Charlie was worse than her, mostly because he was a boy, and he didn't like girls bossing him around. So one day, when we were all lounging around in the School bus--our makeshift home--I pulled him to the side and told him I was counting on him to take care of Shirley. I also added, to puff him up, that since he was the man of our group that I would be counting on him extra. He ate my words like a four course meal, beaming at the hand on his shoulder that he saw as some kind of acquiescence on my part.

And Shirley. The baby of our group—although, who was I lying to when I said that because we all babies--had my greatest sympathies. She was a strong little girl, but a little girl nonetheless. Too small to understand the evil nature of grown-ups, too small to not reach out to a hand that was reaching out for her, too small that she still believed in God and Angels and Paradise. She was always carrying around that book, showing me pictures of the Angel that would gather us all up one day and miraculously take us to Paradise, to Heaven.

It was heartbreaking to watch them being ushered away by that Detective. Not because I thought he would hurt them, or mistreat them. It was because he could take better care of them. I was just pathetically holding onto them at that point, not letting go, and wanting that way of life, the one where we lived on the streets and answered to no one, to continue.

I wanted to protect them all; I still do, even if millions of miles and a sea separated us.

I wanted to protect, to nurture, to save, and deliver…like some kind of Messiah, the one that I didn't want to believe in.

I wanted to protect, and before I knew it, as I said my silent farewell to spunky Dorothy, to brave and noble Charlie, to small and sweet Shirley, watched them go off with a responsible, kind adult, I realized something. Turning to the girl beside me, the one who hadn't left me, who was still standing here, silent as a wall, and waiting for me.

I realized that I was no longer the one doing the protecting.

It was like the angel from Shirley's fairy tale book had stepped off the page, and manifested itself in this silent, white-haired girl.

And slowly, like gears grinding under the shell of a timepiece, things began to change.

And I learned that it wasn't so bad to be shielded, to be protected…like this.

* * *

They were back from Gifu and sleeping off the airplane ride by the time Kyouhei arrived to prepare dinner for them. He knocked once, then twice, and then the jingle of keys could be heard and he was letting himself in.

"Oh, hi Jo." He saw her lying there like a dead thing on the couch, and as if to give an answer back, she rolled on her side. "How was Gifu? Did you guys go to the hot springs?" She sat up and scratching her stomach, she didn't answer his question, just stared blearily at him, while trying to get a focus on her thoughts. She was still trying to wake up from the half daze she had been rooted in for the entire day, while he asked her questions in that soft voice about things she wasn't paying attention to.

For some reason, she could only focus on how girly sounding Kyouhei's voice was. She assumed he was still hitting puberty or something, since his eyes were the same size as Amy's and he looked like if she blew on him, he would tip over.

She was either really hungry, or really bored, if she was having these kinds of conversations with herself.

She got up from the couch, her big shirt crumpled and wrinkled, and displaying for how long a period she hibernated on the couch. Kyouhei looked away nervously as she walked past him and in the direction of sleeping quarters.

Yep. Definitely still hitting puberty. He should get somebody to fix that for him. Maybe she should tell Sei about it, although even a grown man, she thought, wouldn't be able to handle all of Sei, especially not in the chest department.

There was such a thing as _too-__much-woman _and Sei definitely fell into that category.

Jo had made it to her room with a lazy shuffle. Then stopped at the door, because she noticed Meg's door was slightly open and there was music coming through the crack.

That curious thing came back again and before she could stop herself, she was opening the door and walking in. Meg was fast asleep, but her radio had been left on to fend for itself. The music wasn't something she recognized, because the only music she ever listened to didn't involve singing. More like screaming.

A woman's voice was coming over the airwaves, melodious and calming. Jo thought it was no wonder Meg was fast asleep, even if the radio was on. Coming up to the bed, she sat on a side, feeling suddenly very self-conscious and very stupid for barging into Meg's room like this. Meg was passed out on her side, one hand thrown off the bed, and the other thrown in the opposite direction. There probably had been much tossing and turning before this position had been reached. Her covers were no longer on the bed and one of her fluff pillows was lying dead on the ground next to her slippers.

Jo's attention was caught when she saw the edge, of what to her, looked like books under the bed; one sheet's corner barely covering their existence on the ground. She'd reached down then, felt the cover of the topmost, the flimsy, shiny, surface smooth on her fingertips as she traced over it. She pulled one out from its nest and flipping through the book with a casual air, she nearly dropped it when she realized what she was reading.

It was a children's book. Taking another look at the stack on the floor, they all were, and glimpsing over the covers and the titles, Jo wondered what Meg was doing with them.

"The Passing of the Angel." The book in her hand was soon put aside for another, and then another, each title throwing her off further and creating more confusion over the other girl's reading material.

"The Happy Ending of the Kingdom."

"Angel's Paradise."

"Heaven's Bugle."

Jo, glimpsing at her sleeping friend to see if she was still deep in sleep, went through the whole stack. She discovered that most of the books were children's biblical stories with morals and colorful print and pictures. Other's were based loosely on the Bible, with fairy tale motifs thrown in, Jo guessed, for the hell of it, because little kid liked happy endings. It bothered her; these books bothered her, because something wasn't connecting here. She had overheard Meg on separate occasions, without much reluctance say very…atheistic things. That had never bothered her. What was bothering her here was that this went completely against what Meg on all those occasions had said.

Why was she reading these books? What purpose did they serve her?

Jo suddenly felt like shaking her companion awake and asking for an explanation, because suddenly she felt like she had been…betrayed. But that was ridiculous. This was Meg's business, not her own, and yet, the fact that she was, without a doubt, confused about her behavior, just didn't settle right with her. She knew Meg inside and out and for her to doubt her knowledge of the girl now; it made her feel out of sorts.

"Meg, wake up." Her hand was on the other girl's shoulder, shaking her awake.

"Meg, up." Meg made a small noise in her throat, her arms pushing her away, as she yawned and stretched. She abruptly stopped all motions and fell back on her mattress, limp and snuggling into her comforter with every intention of getting back to sleep.

Jo would have rolled her over, but currently, she was distracted by the view she was afforded when Meg's shirt--the only thing she slept in--rode up her thigh.

"I can see your underwear."

Meg was up.

"It's pink and has a white bow on the front."

Meg was definitely up and closing her legs. She could see Jo still looking at her lap, and waving her hand at the other girl, she finally got Jo's attention…on her face.

"Okay, okay. Enough of that." Scooting over to the edge of the bed and seating herself next to the white-haired girl, Meg's gaze stilled on Jo's hands and what they held.

"Hey, those are mine. Jo, what do you think you're doing?" She made an attempt at snatching the book away, but Jo was faster, and was still leafing through it when she had calmed herself down.

"You shouldn't be going though people's stuff." She said with a pout.

Jo looked at her strange. "You're not people. You're Meg." She stopped flipping pages and closed the book with finality. "Why do you have these? I thought you didn't believe in stuff," she raised the book so Meg could have a clear view of the cover and the title, "like this."

Meg grabbed the book from Jo's hands. She didn't feel right with Jo going through her things, especially something as personal as this. She hugged the book tightly to her chest, as if trying to make it disappear from the room and into herself, where it belonged. Hidden away from prying eyes and the world in general.

"Well?" Jo was being more talkative than she ever remembered.

And she was now being the taciturn one. How roles could switch when you weren't paying attention. Meg sighed.

"Do you remember Shirley?"

Jo stared at her blankly.

Guess not.

"The little girl in New York, the one with red pigtails who carried around that stuffed doll all the time."

Jo seemed to have some recognition now.

Meg continued on, "You see…this is going to sound stupid, so don't laugh okay?"

Meg then thought she had already hit a bad start, because Jo wouldn't laugh, even if it were funny.

Brick walls had a better sense of humor.

Jo, as if to demonstrate this was still staring at her blankly and waiting for an explanation.

"Shirley, used to carry around this story book. I don't know where she got it." She distractedly added, "and she would always bother me about this picture that she liked a lot. Saying one day we'd all be saved, and spouting all this nonsense about Heaven and an Angel that would rescue us and carry us to Disney World…or whatever kids thought was paradise."

Jo was still listening and she pressed the storybook closer to her chest nervously.

"And then, well, we…she found you in the Hudson River, and more nonsense flew out of her head." Meg laughed, trying to make the account sound less sad, "She thought you were the Angel, and that you had come to protect us and…you know the rest of the story."

Meg closed her eyes. "She really believed you were the angel from her story book. I even at one point,"-Meg brushed some hair out of her face and started back over, as if her last sentence had never existed. "If you want to know why I collected all of these books, it was just because I wanted to find that picture again. I mean, there's gotta be another book like it, right? It can't be the only one ever published." Even to her, that last part sounded a little desperate, and it left her feeling even more embarrassed.

Jo was giving her the weirdest look and she hated how it made her feel.

"Why?" Jo touched her arm gently.

"Why what?" She turned her head.

"Why are still looking for it if you thought it was so nonsensical?"

This was the question she had asked herself a million times, and a million times over, she had avoided answering it. It didn't seem like she could run away from it anymore.

"Because it was important," she said, not really trusting herself with words right now. "I don't know. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. I mean she was a kid. Shirley was just a baby, and she believed with such…conviction in something that she had never seen."

Jo wanted to tell her that children were just naïve. Of course they believed in things without seeing them. How else could they come up with such a pansy ass bad guy like the boogey man?

Now if they had better imaginations they would give the boogey man a chainsaw.

Meg looking at Jo and seeing the focused expression on her face thought that Jo was putting maybe, a little too much effort into hearing her out.

So she continued on, "She always told me that we were going to be rescued and I hated how she was so sure. I hated how it made me feel to be dependent on those childish words. That she'd given me hope and it wasn't going away. But looking out on the neighborhood where we lived. Where people were shot everyday, where we were starving half the time and trying to live the best we could, I just felt hurt that this…Angel…that God hadn't rescued us already." She smiled a little, "I guess I felt spiteful that he was letting us suffer like that."

Jo with her envious calm said, "Everyone feels that way."

She rolled her eyes, "Really? Have you ever felt that way Jo?"

"No. Why would I feel like that?"

She could have thrown the book at Jo's head, but it wasn't worth the book getting dented.

"Anyway," she gave Jo a narrowed stare and the other girl, unaware that her comforting words weren't really all that comforting and more insulting, stared right back. "I still don't think miracles happen just out of the blue…for normal people. It's just how the world works." But even through her words, she still raised her head optimistically. "Jo, ever since I met you, Shirley's words…little by little have made sense. I see miracles everyday; and you're the only person in the world, to me, who can make impossible things like that happen. I would have never dreamed…" she laughed, "Some of the crazy crap you do and still it all works out for the best."

Meg hoped she didn't have to say it aloud, but she was sure Jo would be able to pick up on all of the suggestions she had left behind. They sat for a good time, silent and still in her room and flicking her eyes over to the other girl, Meg could see the cutely perplexed expression on her face. She readied herself for it.

"I'm just good with a gun. The only miracle involved--in any of those cases-- is that I don't have to pay for the damages I leave behind afterwards."

She smiled at Jo, and sliding over effortlessly, she rested her head on the other girl's shoulder. "But all those close calls. Don't you ever wonder if someone's looking out for you?"

Jo hesitantly placed an arm around her shoulder and she without a pause, snuggled in closer. "Yeah, several hundred feet of steel and grappling capabilities. Its name is Django." Jo squeezed her shoulders. "And well…you too."

"You're sweet." She said unabashedly, kissing under her jaw and slinking her arms around Jo's waist.

_Not as sweet as you. _

Jo wrapped the other arm around the girl and before she could stop herself, they were both lying down on the bed and curled around each other.

Jo, looking up at the ceiling wondered if it was all right for her to hold Meg like this after what they had done in the hot springs. Meg didn't look like she had any problems with their arrangement, and Jo easily placated, left it at that.

"Hey, is that door locked?" Meg asked her, as she placed her hands on either side of her and straddled her waist. Jo, who was too busy looking at Meg and not the door in question, didn't really care if it was locked or not.

Meg smiled up at her, although Jo didn't think she had ever seen a smile like that from the red head, the smile looking more like a promise and not a polite gesture.

Meg dipping her head down was now kissing her, and before she could even get her hands around the redhead in her lap, Meg had grabbed them in hers and twined their fingers together. Jo wasn't sure if she should let the redhead have her way, but when a pink tongue wound its way into her mouth, everything else seemed to lose importance.

Jo still wanted the use of her hands, wanted to run them around in the other girl's hair, and down her back, and…Jo watched with fascination Meg's ass in the air. The girl pressing their hands into the mattress and trying at the same time to keep her balance, as she scooted down to press kisses on her throat. Jo licked her lips as she felt Meg's kiss travel down her neck and a sweep of tongue on her collarbone. She could still see Meg's ass up in the air, swaying this way and that, like it had a mine of its own. Jo wondered if her fixation on Meg's ass had anything to do with the conversation they had the day before.

Meg was now laying kisses on top of the material of her T-shirt and nuzzling her right between her chest. It wasn't long before Meg was moving down again, her fiery hair contrasting greatly to the white, plainness of her shirt, as the girl rested her head right below her navel. Meg's hands were now moving in her grasp, guiding her fingers until they were tangled in her red hair. She left them there and Meg's hands, slipping from her grasp, moved to slip under her shirt, and suddenly Jo found her underwear around her knees.

She couldn't say she was displeased with this turn of events.

Not when Meg--not in the mood for teasing--had placed her mouth on her. Jo had flinched so hard that the whole bed shook.

She shut her eyes then, because the sight of Meg doing that to her, with her mouth and with her soft tongue wasn't something that she thought she could live through. And with the first movement of her mouth, the first feel of wet suction on her clit, Jo kicked her leg out and tried hard not to rip Meg's hair out.

She couldn't stop the groan or stifle the name she called out, and Meg fueled on by her noises, opened her mouth and breathed on her, her lips so hot and moist that she had Jo flinging one of her arms out and twisting the sheets in a one handed grip. She rolled her head to the side, her neck warm and sensitive against the comforter, trying with all her might to not alert the entire RV with the yell that was building in her throat.

This…this wasn't possible. This kind of pleasure, it was almost unthinkable how good it felt. Like she could die, actually die from this. It made Jo, who was always in control, feel like the universe had flipped on it's head and was now dangling over her, ready to crash down and wake her from the fantasy playing before her dazed, red eyes.

Meg was licking her, a little mewling sound breathed between their connected skin as the girl continued to draw upon her continuously with her mouth and tongue. It was too much, and Jo, feeling the sensation between her legs peak bucked up into the mouth on top of her.

Meg's hands, as if it wasn't enough that her mouth was pleasurably torturing her, touched her gently--a completely different sensation from what she was experiencing with Meg's merciless and at the same time merciful mouth. Her orgasm hit her hard and before she could stop it, she had yelled.

"Meg…the…help."

It hit so fast and violently, and her body was shaking uncontrollably as this new and completely withering excitement lifted her from the mattress and had her desperately moving Meg's head in her hands, trying to get this feeling contained.

Meg lapped at her until she was completely finished, and Jo's upper body, falling back to the mattress, abdominal muscles finally relaxing and knees feeling weak, tried to keep conscious.

The redhead had moved away then, climbed back and draped herself over her quivering body. The sounds of her licking her fingers and lips reminding Jo of where that mouth had been just a moment ago.

She opened her eyes, seeing through the haze of first time sexual fulfillment Meg's blue eyes staring up at her.

"You looked like you enjoyed that." Meg was back to kissing under her jaw and Jo, shaking her head stupidly, pinched herself secretly to see if she hadn't died during those last breath taking minutes.


	8. Dawning

Seriously, nothing in Jo's opinion beat Kyouhei's home cooking. Even the hoba misa or the hida beef at Gifu couldn't compare to this. She wondered why home cooked food tasted so much better than random takayaki and ramen stands on the corner. Before Kyouhei had ever entered the scene, those were the places she most frequented if she was hungry. That or order pizza. That's how all of them had lived thus far. Eating cold pizza in the morning, maybe some ramen in the evening, sometimes Sei would bring take-out home just to mix things up, until they fell back on their habit of pizza slices and hamburgers. Jo knew it wasn't healthy. Meg and Amy could give a crap if it was healthy. And Sei had had enough of picking the pepperoni and sausage off her pizza.

So out of the necessity to live past the age of nineteen and not die of heart problems, Sei had introduced the program of a healthy diet into their lives by hiring Kyouhei and getting the little runt to work for them.

Because getting back to her point, home-cooked meals were simply put…awesome. She had seen Meg, on some occasions chance this task and she had seen the end result--a burnt stovetop and the first time use of their fire extinguisher--Cooking had seemed to her, in her quiet analysis of that situation: a difficult, exacting process that required concentration, an innate sense of measurement--Not, this looks like the right amount, right?--and tolerance for pain and the element of surprise. Because when Meg had started screaming that the kitchen was on fire--And Oh my god we're all gonna die!--it had surely taken some precious seconds off her life. That in itself was a monument to how stressful a task preparing a meal was, because if it could spook her and spike up her adrenalin levels, it didn't seem so safe to even microwave ramen anymore.

Jo was starting to believe the women of this trailer had some inescapable curse placed on them every time they entered the kitchen with the intentions of cooking. Good thing she was an observer.

Looking around at the gathered occupants of the RV, as they chowed down on Kyouhei's latest masterpiece--something she guessed had a pretentious sounding name that she wouldn't even attempt to pronounce, much less fathom what it all meant. It tasted like meat, so it was safe to assume it was--It made her wonder if the food prepared by Kyouhei tasted better, not because of added ingredients, but because she was eating it at _her home_ in the company of the only family she _ever_ had.

She supposed this was the reason she liked home cooking so much.

Sei was putting her fork down delicately and wiping her mouth with a napkin. "My, Kyouhei. You outdo yourself every time."

Kyouhei embarrassed scratched behind his neck, "It's French. I was messing around with the flavor in class and I thought I'd try it out on all of you."

Well consider them the best-fed guinea pigs ever.

"It's called Veau a la persillade."

Jo didn't even know where to start on that one. She, however did feel satisfied with her observation skills. At least she had seen that coming.

"It's a veal recipe for saunteed veal scallopini served with persillade, a garlic, shallot…" Blah, blah, some nonsense about the sauce and it goes great with…yeah.

Jo liked home cooking, but she didn't care too much for the explanation of how that home cooking came into existence. She was just happy that it was here and she was eating it.

And by the looks of it, so did Meg and Amy as they thoroughly ignored Kyouhei and continued to messily shovel in the fancy French cuisine. Jo kept her eyes a bit more than necessary on Amy and her love for home cooked meals was suddenly taking a back seat to a new, more exciting sensation, as she thought back on the last few hours.

And she came to a conclusion that there was indeed something that did beat out home cooking, well other than a really good horror flick.

Apparently she really liked blowjobs.

Hmmm.

Of course, she had known about sex before her and Meg had started going out. It didn't really intrigue her, didn't hold her fascination, or call out to her. It was just something that she believed happened between a man and woman…or a whatever, and that it was supposedly the epitome of their society. What with every billboard and practically every sign using it to advertise a product or service…or other crap.

Prior to the experience of the last couple of hours, or the hot springs, or their first kiss, she had always thought sex was just something people did when they were bored and there was nothing to…buy or look at, or whatever normal people did in their spare time.

So imagine her shock when she had learned otherwise, the last couple of days having proven false her skewered impression of it. It was weird. Having something backfire in her face like that. Usually when she formed an opinion on something, it was usually right. She trusted her gut, her instincts, her preservation skills.

And she still trusted them. They were what kept her alive. However, right now, these self-constructed warning signals within her were battling against an invading party. Like a new pathogen introduced into an unsuspecting host, she had not expected this emotion she felt for Meg to take her over so swiftly.

She imagined, maybe that it would take more time. That she needed more time. But then she remembered that these feelings had always been with her, small, so small as to not to draw her attention. They existed within her as they had lived in New York and had some definite substance by the time they moved to Japan. So she couldn't say that it was swift, not when it had been incubating within her for a year.

Still. It was confusing. She felt conflicted-

Not about the blowjob, mind you. Because she knew she definitely liked that.

Really, if anything, it probably held first place ranking in her things to do when she wasn't shooting things. Although treacherously, now that she thought about it, shooting at things didn't seem…quite that fun now that she had been introduced to this new sensation.

It should have shocked her more. It should have made her feel vulnerable. That her own actions could no longer bring her satisfaction, not like Meg could. It was like her independence was being stripped away, her hands tied up and her will tamed.

It was the ultimate submission.

It should have scared her and yet, she was calmly sitting her, eating Veau ah whatever and enjoying the quiet company of her teammates and now…lover.

And it was bothering her that it wasn't bothering her more. That she had to force herself to be alerted by this turn of events. That she would rather, quite honestly not think about it and just enjoy the company and maybe another blowjob in the near--hopefully near--future.

Weakness. This is what made humans weak. Made them reroute their desires for power and god-dom and pour all of it, fleeting emotions and strong wishes into someone they thought were special. Were worth the price of self-control and aspirations.

She had never had such aspirations to begin, but she did have one wish, one desire that had always triumphed over every other small yearning in her heart.

It was the desire to protect Meg. And even when she had not known of her feelings for the other girl, she had ultimately believed in this one wish. Had trained and walked along side Meg, in front of her, always shielding her and praying that when the bullets flew, it flew at her, and not Meg.

These feelings she had for Meg. They made her complacent with their arrangement. They made her wish for nothing more, or nothing less. They made her forget and absentminded of things she previously had no problem remembering. As other things began to take precedence.

It was slowly changing her and Jo couldn't help, but feel that even the small changes were somehow going to alter the way she handled her guns.

Weakness. This was a weakness. There was no doubt about that. The affection, and the kisses, and the sweet touches were going to make her soft. Make her forget how to take a punch in the gut, or swallow the blood down when she was shot.

If she weren't careful, if she was distracted, if she was weaker, then she wouldn't have a chance of protecting Meg.

What the hell was she doing?

"Jo, are you alright?" Meg, breaking her from her thoughts looked at her with a worried expression. "You don't look so good?"

"Yeah Jo," Amy piped in, "You look kind of freaked out. What's up? You trying to sound out the name of what Kyouhei made for dinner?"

"Hey!"

Everybody stared at her on Amy's words.

It had never occurred to her, throughout the jumble of her worries and fears that her face would show signs of what she thought about as they came to her. She had always been naturally adept at hiding her emotions--although most of the time there wasn't anything to hide because nothing really moved her--so forgetting this one facet of her personality, her ingrained training, and reflex was almost unthinkable.

It was like, forgetting how to pull her trigger during a gunfight.

It was like, forgetting how to operate Django.

It was like, forgetting everything that made her who she was.

_Carelessness. _

_Weakness._

_Stupid!_

"It's nothing." She got up, nearly dropped her plate in the process as she hurried out of the room--with uncharacteristic…clumsiness?--and made her way to her bedroom. She locked the door behind her. Feeling frustrated and stupid and a little angry at how she had handled the situation.


	9. West bites East in dumb, ole, lazy head

"I can't believe you guys won't open the door. C'mon, I need a place to stay, you buncha' cheapskates." Hanshin Squad Elite Division's Detective Sergeant Takane Katsu, Leader of the feared Kanbaku Gang, and general kicker of asses has now, for the past five minutes been banging on the front door of the Angel's home-base.

"I came here to check out the sights of Tokyo." She rammed her booted foot into the door and even though it was fortified steel, it still seemed to shake at the power of one of Osaka's finest.

"We really shouldn't have built that ramp for the trailer. Should have just stuck to the ladder. At least that kept nutjobs from kicking our doors." Amy, typing on her laptop and looking very bored with their current situation jumped up, despite herself when she heard a hammering noise.

"Well, she's no longer kicking the door. That's for sure." Meg laughed as she munched on cookies and watched the door being unfairly brutalized by law enforcement.

"Why aren't we letting her in again?" Kyouhei asked, frightened for his life as he heard a thud and then silence. Most likely she had gone for backup or a bigger…stick.

"Um, do we even have to explain?" Meg shoved a cookie in her mouth.

Kyouhei realized she had a point when he heard the revving of a motorcycle engine.

"Man, she's going to go Evel Knievel on us. Oh, I wanna see this." Meg, abandoning her cookie in favor of running to the cockpit to check the outside cameras was rewarded with the sight of Takane maneuvering her Harley up the small ramp.

"Wow, she's good." Kyouhei impressed said over Meg's shoulder. He, despite having not agreed to the majority vote--Amy and Meg--of locking the policewoman out--for the mere fact she was the police!—was now strangely excited to see what would happen when a 500 hundred pound Harley rammed into a steel reinforced door.

The possibilities were limitless.

"Ten bucks says she puts a dent in the door." Meg, reaching into her bra pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

"Ten bucks…cyber money says she dies in a horribly, painful, fiery death." Amy put up her hand, but there was no dollar bill, only the promise of it.

Kyouhei didn't know if it was good idea that they were now betting over the damage of property and…fiery deaths, but he couldn't say he didn't see it coming.

"You're on!" Meg shouted, as she slammed the money down on the table. She then turned to Kyouhei, "Hey, aren't you placing down any bets?"

"I bet we're going to get in a lot of trouble from Sei when she finds out what happened."

Meg flipped her hair over one shoulder annoyed, "That's not a bet!"

"No, it's a promise." Kyouhei said, resigned to the fact that he would be dragged into the business of explaining what happened when the older woman came home.

"Look, look. It's starting. She's actually going to do this. Oh." Amy had an idea, or a scheme. "I should upload this onto the Internet and then ask for donations for the injuries the police ladies gonna get."

"That's actually a good idea. You should make it out in the name of her family. Tell them to send everything to the _relatives_ in Tokyo. We'd make a killin'." Meg said, getting back into money mode, even after years of rehabilitation handed out by Sei and Jo to cure her of her avarice with money.

"Guys, I really think we should let her in." Kyouhei said, as he defaulted back to nervous mode.

The rev of the engine was heard again. Meg and Amy's eyes glued to the screen in anticipation for monetary profit or blood—Either way it was bound to be entertaining.

However, the ringing of Meg's cell phone interrupted the sound of the revving machine outside. "Oh, what is it now?" Meg, flipping open her phone answered with a "What d'you want?"

She certainly didn't expect the voice on the other end to answer back, "I want you to open the door for Detective Takane before she dents my door." Click.

"Oh shit. We've been found out." Meg and Amy, rushing out of the room were then reminded by a now calmer Kyouhei that they should open the door for Sei and Jo, because they'd want to get in too. Kyouhei, pointing to the screen that showed an impatient Jo, a still screaming Takane--who was making Jo less impatient because of her screaming and flailing--and a somewhat irritated looking Sei had the two girls running back into the room like they're heels were on fire.

Meg flipped the switch for the speaker outside. "Hi Sei. We were just messin' around with Takane. She's got such a great sense of humor." Meg said, trying to smooth this over for the best, because the last time she checked anymore cuts on her allowance wouldn't get her that purse she'd been eyeing in the window of Fashion Flawless.

When she received no answer and only the annoyed staring from the three women, Meg knew when to admit defeat. She opened the door.

Amy, who had long ago retreated to her room--silently like a ninja, but cuter than one, she reminded--was erasing every and all evidence from the cameras that said she had been at the scene of the crime. Meg was on her own now.

Kyouhei and Meg met the three at the doorway. Jo, who was clawing away from the obnoxious woman--who was now going on about her Harley-Davidson and its power and maneuvering capabilities to care that the door was open--rushed through the portal, meeting Meg with a not-too-happy face.

It was enough that she had met Takane on her way back from a mission in front of her home, but it was past enough when she had to listen to her yell and threaten and blame all this somehow on her.

Meg, smiling weakly at her offered up a pathetic, "We'd have let her in eventually."

One of Jo's brows lifted skeptically, "Right."

"Honest."

* * *

"Cold, that's what y'all are." Takane said, and her words would have sounded hurt, if she hadn't at the same time banged down her fist angrily on the table.

Sei held up her hands, "Now, now. We would love to welcome you to Tokyo; it's just not a good time. We've been very busy these past days." Sei added in a move to placate the irate policegirl.

Takane considered Sei's response for a minute, her purple eyes scanning the woman before she sagged forward and waved a hand at her to forget about it. "Naw, I won't take offense. I've seen the mess Tokyo's in right now. And oh wee, do you guys have it rough. All those nutbags runnin' around, waving around guns and…their robot puddles and what not."

Amy, who had come out of seclusion--finished destroying the evidence--and sitting next to Sei, said under her breath, "Yeah, nutbags. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

Takane's head lifted up suddenly, like a rottweiler alerted to the presence of danger. "What was that?"

Sei nudged Amy in the arm. "Oh nothing. So, you say you're on vacation."

Takane's intense purple gaze shifted its focus from Amy to Sei instantly, and the brunette couldn't help but breath out a sigh of relief at that.

"Yeah, and no. Daddy says I need some down time after…well yuh know, and so I thought I might check out you folks over here, and see what all the fuss is about big, ole Tokyo. I gotta tell you right now, ain't so impressed." Takane, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms nodded her head in shameless agreement with her opinions.

Sei at a lost for words said, "Well..that's…good."

Then Takane bolted up from her chair, as if she had been administered a tiny electrical shock. "I also came to straighten this place out. You wouldn't believe the asshole cops I ran into on my way over here. And let me tell you, I gave them a piece of my mind. They think twice about harassing innocent motorcycle riders again."

Sei still at a loss for words, now even more so since she had already used up her first response nodded her head.

Takane to her relief had changed her focus to someone else. That someone else now sitting and helping herself to a cup of ramen, quietly slurping and enjoying the hot noodles.

Jo, feeling those purple eyes on her and rolling her own deep colored irises, could do nothing but watch the girl as she came up in front of her and started pointed at her like she had the plague clinging to her face. "And you! I can't believe you can just sit there and let all this happen, Miss Indestructible?"

Jo gave herself a moment to think back on what Takane had just said.

"Miss Indestructible? Now hold o-"

Takane cut her off. "You make me sick Tokyo. With yuh fancy-smacy guns and yuh big, dumb ole' bucket of bolts."

Tokyo? Big, ole' bucket of bolts?

"You can speak badly about me, but don't bring Django into this?"

Takane continued on like she hadn't even heard her. "This place is fallin' apart, and before that happens, I say we clean this city up." Takane with no consideration for the pizza boxes jumped up on the coffee table.

Meg, already fuming about the way Takane was talking to Jo had to watch as the last slice of pizza was squished under Takane's big boots, as the girl stomped her feet and pumped her hands up in the air. Like she was rallying her gang together. For all her knowledge, she probably was.

"I hereby declare this the start of a new Tokyo. A better Tokyo, a Tokyo run the Osakan way!"

* * *

So here she was. On a Saturday morning, walking the streets of dirty Tokyo and spending time with someone she would rather shoot at than have a conversation with.

"Jo, look alive."

She didn't know how to break this to Takane, but this was how she always looked. And it didn't make sense to tell her to look alive when she was.

She could have said no. She really could have. She could have been eating another cup of ramen right now, or Kyouhei's delicious leftovers. She could have been with Meg. She could have been watching TV, but instead she was here.

"That guy just looks suspicious. Doesn't he, Jo?" Takane was pointing to a man with body tattoos, and Jo noticed when the girl's gaze had been caught by other "suspicious activities, that said suspicious man was now helping, what looked like an elderly woman cross the road, probably his grandmother.

"I got a good eye for these things. Always have." Takane put her hands over her eyes, her fingers formed into rings so she could stare through them like binoculars. "Oh, is that drugs?" The girl said, her hands still over her eyes looking like she completely forgot her pretend binoculars weren't real.

"I'll be right back. You stay right here and cover me." Jo watched helplessly as Takane ran over to the group of elderly men playing cards in the doorway of a rundown apartment.

She didn't know why she let herself get dragged into this.

It probably had something to do with Meg, she thought with uneasiness.

This entire week she had avoided Meg like she was death on a stick.

It didn't seem so obvious now, not with all the missions coming their way. Jo, having to accompany Sei on many big league Mafia cases for the Bailan clan and Meg, having her own missions, but admittedly less dangerous and more to do with petty crime.

So she had thrown herself into their contracts with renewed zeal and come back with more blood on her than usual.

Admittedly it was the only way for her to deal with her inner turmoil.

Her method consisting of shooting people and…blowing things up.

It was working so far to distract her from her issues with their relationship, but she knew it would eventually catch up with her. And when it did, she would need a permanent solution. She'd thought about sitting Meg down and talking to her, because they were adults--sort of. They could deal with this reasonably.

But then panic ensued when she had seen Meg enter the living room at that moment and she had fled her battlefield. She noticed she was doing that a lot recently.

It was stupid and cowardly of her. She liked Meg. She loved Meg. There was no question about that. She knew that much. It was a truth that had been reached through hours of questioning. She knew what it meant when you were willing to die for someone. When you were willing to hurt them selflessly and ruin the best damn thing in your life, all for their continued protection.

And she had deliberated with herself this past week to do just that. Tell Meg that she was scared their relationship was changing her, making her weaker and distracted and pathetic.

But truthfully, even if it was the noble thing, the right thing to do, it wasn't something she wanted to do.

It was eating her alive.

She couldn't face Meg like this. Couldn't face Meg when she was so weak, because Meg was used to seeing a strong Jo, a Jo that killed all the bad-guys, a Jo who protected her, who wiped away her tears, and who wasn't the cause of them.

Hence her reasons for avoiding the redhead and coming out here with Takane.

She'd like to think she was stronger than this. But her mind…it was like it was against her. Every word she said in her defense, seemed to come out like a selfish wish to separate herself from reality.

Taunting her, making her see things that made her shiver and want to close her eyes against it, but couldn't, because it was thankfully not physically in front of her. Still didn't make her feel better when the possibilities of Meg's death, of different scenarios ran through her mind's eye.

It was disturbing.

It hurt her head and made her want to scream, because it really did feel like someone was penetrating her head with an ice pick.

"Well that was a waste of time." Takane said, swaggering over, handcuffs swinging without any criminal limbs attached.


	10. I love you

___Who do you think you're kidding?_

_You are a machine._

_Nothing, but a soulless machine._

_That does nothing, but kill._

_You can't blend in._

_However hard you try._

_It'll always end up the same._

_Come back._

_To where you'll be needed._

_To where you'll be wanted._

_To where you need not concern yourself with anything else, but your guns._

_Don't believe you owe them anything._

_You don't have any obligations to these people._

_You are free._

_Free to kill anyone._

_Free to slaughter them all._

_They don't love you._

_They don't understand you._

_Who would understand a monster like you?_

"**_JO!" _**Jumping up from the bed and clutching her chest, Jo tried to get her breathing and heart back under control.

"Shit." She reached out blindly, fumbling across the sheets of her bed, looking for the person who had called out to her. Meg was at her side. The hands on her gentle and soft and warm enough that she could forget—for that moment that Meg held her—the words echoing around in her head.

"Shhh, Jo. You were making a lot of noise. I'm surprised no one woke up. Are you okay?" Meg was now rubbing a soothing circle on her back and she had latched onto her with enough force to bruise the other girl.

She was sweating. Her palms moist, the back of her neck cool, now that it wasn't smashed up against the pillow, her chest hot with fright and adrenalin. She clutched Meg tighter.

"Jo…you're scaring me. What's wrong?" Meg whispered in her ear. She smelled like the lavender bath soaps she kept by her vanity mirror. She smelled clean, dry and like cotton. Jo felt herself relax infinitesimally.

"Nothing. Probably…something I ate." She whispered back. Although it didn't sound quiet as clear as Meg's voice. It was shaking and hoarse-sounding, the tenor even deeper because sleep-fogged and groggy.

"You want me to get you something to drink?" Meg said this time. She moved her head back so Jo wasn't cradled against her neck anymore.

"Like water?" It occurred to Jo when the words came out her mouth that, that was an incredibly stupid question. What did it matter what she drank? She hastily corrected herself, "No. I'm fine. You just…" Her arms were still around the redhead, still fisted in her nightshirt and not anywhere near letting go. "…Sleep."

Meg gave her a funny look, patted her back one more time, and tried to lie back down.

However, Jo wasn't letting go and it was kind of hard to fix herself comfortably in her spot, when Jo's hands weren't letting her move anywhere.

"Sorry." Jo let her go.

Now she knew something was up.

"Jo, do you want to talk about it?" She was lying on her side, one of her hands reaching out so she could tug the white-haired girl to lie back down.

Jo complied and soon she was looking at the profile of her companion as she lay on her back, her hands linked stiffly over her chest and position uncomfortable looking.

Jo turned to her then, shifting onto her side and facing her with eyes that gave away more than they should. Meg felt her heart stop.

But Jo didn't let her ask another question because she was moving closer to her, her hands now clutching the back of Meg's neck to pull her into an awkward embrace.

It shut her up without a doubt, and she thought that maybe Jo was trying to avoid the topic. Whatever it was.

"Jo, I don't want you to think that you can't come to me for anything? Because you can."

Jo was being quiet with her.

It wasn't her normal quiet. It was awkward and forced. The tension in the air and the tautness to her embrace, more than adequate signs pointing out a problem.

There was pressure on her neck, Jo's blunt fingernails edging into the skin there and Jo's mouth pressed against her throat. She could feel her warm breath skating across her throat, feel its ragged rhythm and hear it's strange loudness.

And then, as if in a dream, Jo was kissing her and hugging her even tighter around her back, her hands moving down to her hips, as Meg tried to think about the strangeness that led Jo to do this. It wasn't the usual way they found themselves together. Completely natural and melting, like they couldn't help it, like they were two planets moving in opposite revolutions, but nonetheless being drawn in by each other's gravity. Like she was the land and Jo was the ocean, the lapping of the shores smooth and gentle and happening because nature intended. It could not be helped, could not be stopped. It was beautiful harmony. But this, something was discordant about it.

The way Jo kissed her and held her seemed more desperate than loving. Like she needed to remind herself that Meg was here and nowhere else.

The hands roving over her hips were suddenly between their bodies, working Meg out of her underwear and touching her, pressing into her. She felt the answering shudder, couldn't help but let the initiative of Jo's touch overwhelm and disquiet her all at the same time.

She could hear Jo gasp and lean into her even more, press her open mouth to the sensitive side of her neck and graze her teeth over the skin. Biting her and licking her enough where she knew it would leave a large mark in the morning.

Jo had made it impossible for her to reciprocate the feeling, made it so there was no room for her arms to join them in between their bodies. Her fingers now gliding through the white hair that looked silvery in the small light filtering through the curtains.

The motions of Jo's finger in her, pushing in as deep as it could go, before slipping out and resuming cadence with her own answering hips. She fought back the cry in her throat, thought fleetingly that this wasn't something they should be doing, because it felt like Jo was hiding behind it. Using it as a cover, when sex should be sex and nothing more, but a connection, and sweetness and love.

She was practically throbbing around the finger in her. Couldn't help but pull Jo's short hair a little and shut her eyes to the ache Jo's touch called in her and the feel of lips latched onto her pulse point.

Her legs tightened around Jo's sides when she felt Jo's other hand slip down their bodies and touch her clit. The dual sensation overriding any type of restraint, as she lost the purchase on Jo's hair and ended up clawing at the skin on her shoulders.

"Jo…harder." She wanted the finger inside of her to stop the throbbing, to halt her light-headedness and her helplessness. Jo was rubbing her clit faster than the finger inside of her and Meg crushed them together even more, regardless if this made it harder for Jo to work her. She could feel Jo's nipples through her shirt, made sure she squirmed and moved her stomach over them, so Jo didn't forget that this wasn't a one-way street.

Jo was shoving two fingers in her, the copious amount of wetness between her legs making it possible for them to slide in and slide out without any trouble. It hit a spot between her legs that made her tremble and bite her lip on accident. She breathed in, smelling the scent of sex rise between them, the smell making her mouth remember the taste of Jo, the wetness, the trembling.

"Uhhh…I…love you." She spasmed, her body shaking with enough force to make the other girl shake along with her, as she released and tried to stay alive from the overload of stimulus.

When she'd finished, her eyes were watering and the saliva in her mouth felt like it was running down one side of her lips. It probably was. She probably looked a mess.

But the haze of her orgasm had her fainting back into her pillow, uncomprehending of anything except the soft down suddenly under her neck, Jo's warm groans in her ear and the blissful feeling of completion between her legs.

She knew this wasn't right. That what she'd done in the throes of passion and her own desperation had made her neglect Jo's psychological state.

She knew it wasn't fair that Jo would use such methods on her to keep her quiet and satisfied. It kind of hurt her feelings. It kind of made her mad. And it kind of made her want to close her eyes and sleep the day away tomorrow.

It also hadn't escaped her what she had whispered during her throes of passion and hopefully Jo, who was nestling down beside her and nuzzling into her shoulder, seeming completely oblivious.

She loved Jo. She was in love with Jo. She didn't know how many other ways she could express this deep emotion that bound the two of them together. She wanted to tell Jo and she had just told her, but it hadn't seemed profound enough to settle the uneasy coil in her stomach.

Jo was her everything. She wanted to express that without the burning, scalding, terrifying, beautiful feeling of sex driving her to shout the words. Because she knew she could say those three words without it. That she could say it to Jo, proudly and content and despite the fluttery, embarrassed emotion that could follow if Jo didn't say those words back.

It would hurt.

It would make her want to cry.

But even if Jo never said those words, she knew that what they shared was love. If Jo never said those words, it didn't mean that her world was ending. That nothing would be the same. Jo was just the sort of person, who didn't need to say those words back. She might not even understand the emotion, much less know it existed out there and they partook of it on a daily basis.

But that didn't matter, because what she felt for Jo, what she knew existed between them was enough, was the only thing that mattered.

Even if for eternity, she whispered those words and they were never in return, whispered back.


	11. The Scent of Battle

___I'm watching you._

_And I'm waiting._

_And this time, you won't be able to escape me._

* * *

"Jo, do you need me to…help you carry anything?" Meg, calling from behind Jo's bedroom door waited for the other girl to come out.

The door suddenly opened and Meg, always finding herself amazed at how quickly Jo dressed, got out of the way. Jo, who was still slipping on her jacket and fixing her guns in the holster looked up at the redhead, as said redhead smiled unsurely at her and self-consciously tucked some stray strands of hair behind her ear.

"I can help you carry that?" Meg said, looking down at the duffle bag that Jo had clutched in one hand. Jo glanced at her, one of her eyebrows lifted to inquire about Meg's sudden urge to help her carry extra parts for the Desert Eagles.

They were _her_ guns. It was only normal that she carry them, on account of her knowledge of how to handle them. It was the same with Meg too. Despite the massiveness of her sniper rifle, Jo wouldn't aid her in carrying it around. If Meg didn't know how to handle her own weapon then she would learn through practice.

"I can carry it," Jo said. She easily lifted the bag over one shoulder and then asked Meg, "Don't you want Leo to exchange out some parts for you?"

"Oh, I'm fine." She added quickly.

Jo, looking down at her own feet and then to the side of her, her voice softer than usual, casually put out, "It's a maintenance check. It wouldn't hurt"-

"Okay." Meg said suddenly.

Jo's eyes snapped back to Meg's face and it was the redhead's turn to feel unsure, as she looked down at the ground and shuffled her feet. "I'll go get them. I'll meet you back here. Okay."

"Yeah." Jo said, her eyes still on her face.

"Okay." Meg backed away from Jo, smiled shakily and then suddenly turned around and bolted down the corridor loudly.

Jo watched her departure with a mixture of confusion and annoyance.

All morning Meg had been clinging to her more than usual—not that Jo minded, Meg had always been wonderful company for her, but something about her attitude towards her today was…weird. She was being really…attentive, even cautious in the way she was handling her, like some small child, or easily-scared off animal.

It was...

Why was Meg treating her this way?

Last night, they'd had sex. Really good sex, if she was any kind of judge on that sort of thing. She really (really) liked it and she'd thought Meg had liked it too.

So what reason did Meg have for treating her like some type of invalid?

Did she not…do it right?

She could admit, she didn't know much about sex. The only things she had picked up was from watching television at a late hour and conversations she had stumbled onto when she walked through the uncensored streets of Tokyo. Sex hadn't seemed too hard and Meg had already given her a precedent to work with, although thinking back on her first time, it was a pretty high precedent that Jo didn't think herself capable of topping (Ever).

Meg was really good at sex.

Better than good. Amazing.

She was expert level, and Jo wondered distractedly how she'd gotten to be so good…

But Meg had been a virgin.

Just like her.

And Meg would have told her otherwise if she wasn't. Right?

"I'm back." Meg said, a bit unnecessarily Jo thought, as she had heard her running (stomping) her way down the small corridor a long time ago.

"You ready?" Jo said, noticing the large firearm Meg was totting in her arms.

"Yeah." She said, as she hefted the gun higher in her arms.

"Do you need any help?" Jo didn't know why, but Meg's attentiveness seemed to be contagious, because suddenly she was offering to carry the girl's gun.

She was making herself look like a hypocrite.

Meg looked startled and then smiled at her quickly, "Oh no. I can carry it."

"Uh, okay." Jo said awkwardly.

* * *

Today was the day. She was going to corner Jo and demand that she tell her what was going on. It was about time too, because it was past ridiculous the way they were dancing around each other and the subject at hand.

So yeah, today was going to be the day.

Right here, right now.

"Jo, how the hell do you come back here a week later with the calibrations on your guns all fucked to hell?"

Right after Leo finished talking to Jo. Yes!

"I duh know. Figure it out, you're the expert here."

"Aw Christ, you'd think I'd be used to your sassing me all the time. Get the hell out of here and let me do my work."

She noticed Jo's playful smirk at Leo's words.

"I want my guns fixed. And fast. C'mon Meg." Jo was already out the garage door and Meg, smiling at Leo ran after her. It was always such a strange thing to see Jo "playful" with someone. Jo smirked during gunfights when she was winning--but that kind of smirk had a deadly edge to it--She talked trash too. Although the big difference with Jo's trash talking compared to most others was that she could indeed back it up.

Jo had always been that way with Leo, though. They were kind of like…brother and sister, or…considering Leo's age, father and daughter. It was kind of nice to see them every time they sat down together and bickered about Django like—Why aren't you easier on her? Or, dear god, jesus and luciver, this isn't some kind of toy, or what the hell do you mean you wanted to press that button to see what it did?

Thinking on it now, Jo kind of bickered with Takane too, although it was more of the fiery brunette screaming and shouting at Jo and Jo egging her on with her calmness. She had seen Jo tease the younger girl on more than one occasion too. It was pretty funny, but it had also—at some point in time—gotten her (a teensy bit) jealous.

She didn't consider herself the jealous type. She was level-minded enough to see that Jo had eyes only for her, but…

Quite frankly she was an attention hog.

It wasn't her fault.

When it had just been the two of them, Jo had spoiled her rotten with attention, although that goes without saying, since it had only been the two of them at the time. She'd never liked to share Jo with anyone, so it was pretty hard to get accustomed to Jo leaving on missions without her and coming back at all of hours of the night to her bloody, and grimy, and smelling of death.

Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like if they'd never come with Sei to Japan. She loved Japan though, even if it hadn't been a first home. It was the place where Jo had found her own type of happiness, and when Jo was happy, she was happy.

"Jo?" The white-haired girl turned to her.

"Can we talk?"

Jo made a move like she was about to turn around, but then halted. At that moment, she kind of reminded Meg of a mannequin. Unnaturally pale skin, combined with strange crimson, glasslike eyes and accentuated with white, doll hair.

Jo was already so different from other people and her physical appearance had only served to reinforce that idea.

Meg, coming up behind her put her hands gently on thin shoulders.

"Last night…"

"Hmm?" She felt the shoulders under her fingers tense up.

"You were actin' kind of…funny."

Jo's shoulders still felt like they weren't going to loosen up anytime soon.

"We could talk about it."

Jo was still not responding.

"Jo?"

Jo wasn't even making an attempt to pacify her. She was just standing there, breathing a little more loudly than usual and stiff as a board.

"Please…talk to me Jo."

_Don't do it._

_She's just trying to win you over with guilt._

_She's very conniving, don't you agree?_

_Using fake tears to get her way._

_What a marvelous, beautiful pet she'd make._

"Shut up."

"Jo?" Meg shocked at Jo's sudden quiet, seething response pulled the other girl into an apologetic hug. "Jo, I didn't mean to-"

"I'm not talking to you Meg." Jo said, sweat dripping from her brow, her heart beating a mile a minute, her arm with the wing tattoo suddenly aching and her head feeling like it was about to split open.

_Listen to the voice of reason within you Jo._

"Who the fuck are you?"

_Why, you of course. Who else would be in here?_

"Stop it."

"**JO!**" Meg, coming around to face her, her hands clinging to her shoulders looked her in the face.

_You're making a fool out of yourself._

"I know my own voice. And you are not it."

_Restrain yourself before she notices. I don't think you would enjoy spending the rest of your life in a stray jacket._

"She wouldn't do that."

"Jo, who are you talking to! What's going on!"

Jo, snapping out of her anger suddenly noticed two, very large and very blue eyes inches away from her own.

"Jo?" Meg's sad and sotto tone was more than enough to wretch her away from the teasing voice in her head. She didn't want to be the cause of Meg's sadness, even though she had promised herself that despite tears from the redhead, she would do whatever it took to shield and protect her, even if it made a liar out of her.

"Please Jo? Tell me the truth." However, it seemed that she had not sufficiently prepared/trained herself to withstand Meg's sadness, because suddenly she found herself speaking without her knowledge.

"Somebody's…messing with me."

_Don't do it-_

"What! But...how can they? How do you know that...Are they close by? How close are they, Jo?"

_Closer than you think._

Jo, grabbing Meg by the arms pushed her away. "I need you to go get my guns from Leo."

"But I can't leave-"

"Meg, go." Jo's eyes were hard as they stared at her.

There was a pause from Meg, her eyes wide and wet with leashed tears. "Jo..."

"Go!" Jo shouted, her eyes still hard and not giving an inch.

Meg flinched at the harsh sound, her mouth opening as her eyes shivered closed and she could stand it no more. She ran in the direction of Leo's, sparing a backwards glance and the sight of overflowing tears, before she disappeared into the building.

Jo watched her go before turning back around and heading in the opposite direction.

_You're going to regret this._

"I'm not going to be one regretting anything."


	12. The Feint

_"You're getting closer."_

Jo was walking at a brisk pace as she shoved her way through the stubborn crowd.

"_You're so close that you're red hot."_

She could instinctively feel eyes on her.

It didn't help that she had left her guns with Leo in her rush to put distance between herself and Meg. The feeling only seemed to intensify with each forward step, each breath and each wave of adrenalin that beat through her system.

"_Red like Meg's hair."_

This thing, this person, this whatever it was definitely knew how psychological warfare worked. It definitely knew how to play her and goad her and shake her up.

"_Red like her fingernail polish."_

The only thing that was driving her forward, other than her adrenalin was her hatred for this voice and the fact that when she was finally face to face with this thing, she would beat the ever-living crap out of it.

"_Red like her blood."_

She was now under an indiscriminate skyscraper, looking up at it and trying to get any visual on her enemy.

"_Tsk, tsk, you're lukewarm yellow now."_

Dammit. Where the hell was the bastard hiding?

"_You keep looking up at the sky. I can tell you right now, I'm no god. But I'm close, so close."_

"Fucking hell." She swore, right in front of the skyscraper and right in the midst of the pavement, loud enough for the people passing by to give her strange looks.

"_I'm right behind you." _It taunted and Jo swiveled around, anxious and angry to get this fight started.

But the only thing she was met with was the infinite crowd of people she had passed on her way here. She was being jumpy and foolish. There was no way this person would be in the crowd. She would have seen them, sensed them, she would have noticed…

"_Unlike god, when you call out for me, I come."_

"Then give me a name to call out." She said, desperate for this conflict to come to an end. It was the first time she'd ever felt rattled before a fight.

People were ignoring her on the whole, but only a bold few were staring right at her and whispering words that she did not care to hear or know.

"_I can't do that. Because then the curse will be broken and the Princess will be set free."_

"Goddamit! Then just come down here you nutjob." She was full out screaming now and the shock of her voice stopped some pedestrians dead in their tracks.

"_I can't do that." _It repeated again, like she hadn't heard it the first time.

Jo put her hand over her eyes, trying to stop her anger from making her dizzy. It was one thing that her enemy was close by, it was another annoying ass thing when she couldn't find that enemy and the fucker was taunting her.

"_I can't do that because...I'm no longer anywhere near you."_

Jo removed her hand from over her eyes.

"What?"

"_Didn't you know? A god is prohibited from fibbing."_

It was like this...thing was having a conversation with someone else in her mind and she, the hapless onlooker could only witness this one-sided conversation and attempt to pick at the pieces, the words, like a scab and uncover the problem, the infection, the cure.

_"Keep in mind that I'm not a god, Jo."_

"Then why…?" Why the hell did this thing drag her out here? What the fuck was going on?

"_How fast do you think you can run back to Leo's? Do you think you'll make it in time?"_

"Make it in time for wha"- And suddenly everything was snapping into place and making sense. Oh dear god, she was such a fool. "You piece of crap, if you even go near-"

"_But I already have. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it, freak!"_

Jo stood there shell-shocked, not because of the sudden harsh tone the voice was using, but because this thing, it had known how she would react and it had counted on that reaction. It knew she would blindly run into enemy's territory, into enemy's sights and that when she did, it would strike her unprotected loved ones.

"_Have fun with the crowd."_

There was silence on the other end, a bleak silence that further conveyed her defeat and her mental trauma to that defeat.

The crowd, also as if in agreement with the silent mockery the voice had imparted on her with its departure was still tightly compact, an almost impenetrable wall of bodies that even with her sudden angry burst of vehement shoving and cursing only parted slowly.

If only she could fly. She looked at the arm that had the wing tattoo and wished with all her might that those lines edged into her skin, the flat, curving and outstretching pattern that represented a far off abstraction of human religion and ego, that it would come alive, sprout up from her skin, from the right side of her shoulderand usher her up to the sky. Even if it was only able to produce one feasible wing. She would rather be a one-winged angel than flightless.

"Move!" She barked because in reality this was the only thing she could do. She couldn't fly. She wasn't a god. She could only continue to shove her way through the crowd and halt her step due to circumstances not within her control, as the bodies all around her pressed in from all sides.

How could the street be so crowded!

She'd never seen it so bad.

And not just that, but the bodies around her didn't feel soft and vulnerable like the bodies she was used to encountering. They felt sturdy, almost like they were padded down. Almost like they…

Someone suddenly pushed her from her blind side.

She stumbled into someone else and it felt like she hit a wall.

"You should watch where you're going, miss." A man's voice plainly said, and then a hand was clutching her arm and ripping her away and into another direction.

The crowd, if it was possible had gotten denser.

She could smell something like oil and turbine rich in the air.

Like freshly carved out prosthetics parts, rotten blood and the grim from the city streets.

Someone hit her on her blind side, right in the ribs and the impact knocked her into another set of hard bodies.

Was this what that voice had meant when they'd said to have _fun_ with the crowd?

She again felt someone grab onto her hand and squeeze, bone shifting under bone as she wrenched her arm free and kicked the person in front of her to give her enough room to get away.

She saw another hand reach out, she heard someone scream out of the circle of bodies she was currently trapped in. She heard more screams and the sound of stampeding feet.

So…her enemies had mixed themselves in with the normal crowd. But if she had to guess, they were no longer dispersed, but all around her in this very confined circle they restricted her to, with only a few stragglers scattered around the streets.

The scent of them was thick.

Normal body replacement parts didn't smell like this. They smelt more of medicine; they smelt more of sterilized plastic and not of gunpowder and blood.

She'd always had a good nose for blood. She reeked out of it, so it wasn't hard to figure out who her fellow murderers were in this crowd.

The strong smell of industrialized heavy ore and iron, fused with blood and rotten tissue wafted from the circle she was trapped in. The sight of them was normal enough, but she couldn't always trust her eyes. They were misleading, unlike her nose.

She grabbed onto a boy with blond hair, his baby face an ideal cover for the blood and guts he reeked off. He let his true colors show when she'd gotten his hand in a lock and started pulling, hearing not the normal pop of dislocated bone, but the grinding away of steel upon bolted joints.

He howled and tried to strike at her face with his suddenly sharpened fingernails, but she tossed him and his body intercepted with another assailant.

She stumbled back into another body, this one reeking of sweat and drugs. Her arm had collided with his face, her elbow smashing his nose and driving it into his skull as she used his body to barrel through the angry crowd at her back. She let him fall and using the space she had opened for herself, she put her foot back, drove it into the hard concrete under her and boosted forward, plowing her knee into the unlucky bastard in front of her.

He went down hard. It was an instantaneous knockout and she used his body as leverage to hop from him and onto the next victim. She'd ended up with her hand smothering his face, her fingers locking around his jaw until she felt blood and heard a crunch. He was falling back and she forward and she let the momentum set her up for a kick, her boot grounding into the temple of another unluckily positioned bastard, watching his face practically cave in from the force, his body suddenly knocking hard into the lamppost to his right.

There was blood. A lot of blood and it was all oozing out of the kicked man's head. Strangely though he was getting right back up and she had to watch as he stumbled forward, smearing blood on the person to his left and skidding on his own blood when he stepped into a forming puddle at his feet.

She couldn't take her eyes off of him, even though there were more enemies to be dealt with, she could not look away, because this man was clearly missing a part of his head, the somewhat pink, oily gloss of a brain poking out of the ripped flesh. She stared at it entranced, because brain matter always looked much different in real life than in horror flicks.

Especially when that brain matter was somewhat pulsing around his wound and glowing. That bright sickly, greenish, white light that made her instantly remember her own personal encounter with this thing.

He was limping forward, aggressive as ever and still reaching out for her with his split nails and bloody palms.

She could suddenly see the nerves and veins in his face, like he was an anatomical dummy instead of a real, breathing human being. All the blood seemed to have drained away from his face and the veins became more pronounced, a bluish-green hue that was matched by the faint color from the deep gash on the side of his temple. Something like tentacles was slithering all over his face and simultaneously reaching out to her.

She took an unconscious step back.

Of all the places to run into this thing, why did it have to be now!

The man halted in his step, like he had run out of batteries and then he was groaning loudly, painfully, his hands going up to clutch at his head as he tipped back and forth like a drunk.

She switched her stance to her strong side, her dominant shoulder in front of her now and the man was suddenly struck out of his daze by the sound of her shoes scuffing the pavement.

He ran directly at her and she pulled back and socked him in the face. He was unconscious before he hit the ground. The brain was still moving around and she jumped over him and using that same dominant shoulder she plowed her way through her assailants.

It was hard.

Her progress still being impeded by the sturdy bodies and their questing hands that almost knew her every move. It was her rotten luck or the smarts of her caller that kept her from taking higher ground. The skyscrapers above her loomed dangerously and unforgiving, and it made her want to curse them for being so sorely out of her reach.

When she came out of the circle, she was covered in blood that was not hers and bruises that were. Her shoulders ached, but she knew they would heal by the time she made it to Leo's. She was a fast healer. She was also a fast runner.

She _could_ make it.

She _would_ make it.

She _had_ to make it.


	13. It Hits You After

She was pealing around the corner and flinging herself at the entrance, her feet skidding along the strangely slick floor as she gripped Leo's worktable to steady herself. Her breath was finally catching up to her and Jo, heaving herself up was met with the sight of her worst-case scenario.

There was blood.

A path of it that trailed to the door and to the back of the garage, tools and parts were scattered all over the floor, the scent of gasoline repugnant in the stale ozone as the ground had been doused with it. It was mixing in with the blood, contaminating the red pigment with an oily residue, the strong smell of fuel and the iron tincture from the blood overpowering in the small room.

"Meg! Meg!" She shot past the red path, lost her balance when her boot slipped in the bloody grease at her feet and stubbornly stumbled forward, fright and adrenalin ripping through her lungs as she saw more blood, a handprint smearing along the wall and disappearing into the other room.

"Meg!" She called out; her hands reached wildly for the bloodied wall as she trailed her fingers over it and followed it into the next room.

"Meg!" She gripped the handle on the door to Leo's office and like another shocking gunshot to the heart it wouldn't open. She slumped forward against it, feeling all the energy sap out of her, the fright and the expectations of what she might have to face on the other side of that door ripping the fight out of her. She knocked her shoulder against it disheartened, felt like she actually wanted to cry when her attempts only shook the frame. The old pain in her shoulder was acting up again, the healing effects of time abandoning her and taking her spirit with it.

"Meg…" She sobbed on the other side of the door and sunk her foot into the concrete under her feet, using all her body weight to push into the creaking door. She slammed against it, heard the thump of something barricading it and she reared back and drove her bruised shoulder into the door until she heard it splinter and crack.

She pulled back and drove her foot into it, saw the green paint of the room on the other side and grabbing onto a piece of the door she flung it to the side. She pushed through the wooden wreckage and the furniture acting as obstacles and fell into the room, heart pounding a mile a minute and her eyes scanning the room wildly for a lock of red hair.

"Jo…?" She turned in the direction of that voice, found herself staring at the front of a desk, bloody handprints smeared all over the floor next to it.

"Leo!" She heard herself calling out, her voice, like a strangers and she was rushing over in the direction of his voice. She saw him propped up under his desk, his right arm completely useless to him as blood leaked out from a wound in the appendage. It was thrown out to his side; the arm horribly twisted and shattered looking.

"Leo, what…?" There was also another large wound on his side and the blood flowing out turned his gray garage jumpsuit black.

"Meg…" Leo started but didn't get very far when he began to cough and wheeze. He attempted to lift his hand to pull her closer, but it wouldn't rise when commanded. "Some guys burst in here and I…" he coughed some more, "I reacted too slow."

The wound seemed to turn darker as if to demonstrate his fatal flaw. "I told Meg to get the hell outta here, to go find ya…I was pretty good at distracting them…" Leo closed his eyes and then they suddenly flew open, like he was fighting the heaviness that had descended upon them. "I was able to barricade the door...and they knocked against it...I distracted them good...but they got quiet."

Jo thinking fast sent out a distress signal to Sei who she knew would get in touch with the right people. They wouldn't be able to call the ambulance without alerting the police and it was a morbid routine for everyone working under Sei who was injured on the job to seek medical attention from blacklist specialist and underground hospitals.

"Hold on Leo." She said, tossing her phone to the side as she pulled off her jacket and was helping him to sit straighter against the leg of the desk. She tied the jacket around his side and pulled the sleeves into a knot right on the wound. He winced and started to mumble, "that's good she found you. That's good."

Jo had to look away at that moment from the man's dim cast eyes, because she didn't have the heart to tell him that Meg hadn't been the one to get her.

Leo continued on half delirious from the blood loss, "She's tougher than she looks." His head lulled to the side, like it was tethered to his body by string and not muscle and bone and skin. "She's so small…but…when you're in a pinch, she…" Leo eyes at that moment seemed to roll into the back of his skull, he was slumping forward, and his breathing weaker than it had been a minute earlier.

His face looked swollen, like he'd taken a couple of hard blows to the face and Jo only hoped none of the injuries to his face weren't permanently damaging. She continued to press her hands to his wound to keep pressure on it and to keep her mind focused on something other than the alarming panic coursing through her. Her chest felt tight, her throat sore. She swallowed the grievous lump caught in her windpipes, heard herself gasp to keep the tears away as she closed her eyes and prayed that help would get here soon.

* * *

Leo was going to be okay. They'd gotten there in time and Leo…was going to be okay.

Sitting in the waiting room and being given that news by a doctor with a coffee stain on his tie hadn't caused her whole body to breath out a sigh of relief like it wanted too, because she was still thinking about Meg.

She had never stopped thinking about Meg.

"That's good." Kyouhei breathed out beside her and she was still—weirdly—focusing on the doctor's tie, the one with the coffee stain and now that she looked a little closer…raspberry jam on one side of his shirt lapels.

That raspberry jam reminded her of Meg's hair.

She thought it was the shock catching up with her and the fact that she couldn't do anything…about anything.

She stared harder at the splotch, felt her eyes grow misty and it suddenly felt like somebody was choking her and digging their fingernails into his throat.

"Jo." Sei's voice came out from somewhere near her left.

And for some reason, her head had turned to the right and toward Amy when she had actually wanted it to look to the left toward Sei.

"Jo, we've got nothing to worry about. Meg's tough…we're tough." Amy told her with a slow bob of her head, the pink and white decorations in her hair looking gloom in the too bright lighting overhead.

"Jo." Sei was still calling out to her and suddenly the voice was right in front of her.

"Kyouhei, can you go get something for Jo to drink." Sei softly ordered, like she didn't want her to hear.

"Sure." He got up a little too quickly and was rushing over to the vending machines. She heard the sound of change suddenly hitting and rolling across the hospital's waxed floors.

"Jo." Sei, who was in front of her, was lightly squeezing her by the shoulders. "Maybe you should go lie down. They'll contact us when they want ransom. They wouldn't kill her without reason. They must want ransom and you have nothing to worry about. We'll get Meg back. I'll have grandfather wire the money into my account."

She didn't know why, but nothing was making any sense in her head. Sei's words were one of them. She remembered the far-off voice that had toyed with her, but she had not remembered any promises of ransom or exchanged materials. And it was like it was happening in slow motion when she had asked Sei her question. "Who will contact us?"

Sei got a surprised look on her face and then she covered it with a strained smile, "Everything will work out, so please…try to get some rest."

Did Sei know who was going to contact them? She shouldn't know, but Sei was well informed, maybe she had already figured it out. Maybe she had already solved the case and maybe this was all some bad dream and she was supposed to wake up now. "Do you know who'll contact us? It's one person; the voice in my head was one person. It wasn't a 'they'." She said, and the doctor present was nodding at Sei and moving closer to her.

"Miss, I think your friend should go lie down. It's been a long day. It would do her some good to get some rest."

And for some reason she couldn't stop talking about the voice, that thing that had harassed and taken away the most precious thing in the world to her. If only she had talked about it before…like this! Then maybe…maybe Meg would have been spared.

"It's gone now. But it was there." She pleaded with Sei and the woman had her hand on her shoulder and was helping her up. The doctor came up to her other side, but Sei told him she could handle it. When he was gone, Sei had gripped her shoulder harder than necessary and she flinched because the skin there was still bruised and un-healing, like the wounds in her heart.

"I believe you. I believe you, Jo." Sei had said, her voice not wavering at all, but firm, steadfast and Jo hadn't known it was even possible for such a thing to give a person hope. The sound of another person's voice, it had always been secondary to a person's actions to her, but right now, right at this very moment that wasn't the case anymore, because when Sei had spoken again, confident and resilient like steel.

"We're getting her back."

Jo had believed her wholeheartedly.


	14. Sin is red like an Apple

"I tried to hack into Meg's cell phone. There's a tracker that I installed in everyone's phones, but for some reason it's not picking up."

"They took it from her?"

"Yeah, that could be very likely or" Amy continued, "It could be that she's too far out of reach for us to track her."

Sei, who had been leaning up against a desk for the latter part of this conversation, ditched her comfortable perch and walked over to the young brunette. "But those trackers can work anywhere within Japan. What are you trying to say, Amy?"

The brunette shrugged her shoulders, "I don't know. It seems like a stretch and there could be a number of logical reasons why we can't track her, like her kidnappers took away her phone, they destroyed it, she lost it during the scuffle…but something Leo said. It's bothering me." Amy cupped her jaw, "When he was describing the guy's uniforms that attacked him, and even the weaponry." Amy hit a button on her laptop and the screen was suddenly flooded with images of military and swat gear.

"The make of the guns, knives, and even the uniforms are foreign based. Leo even said he heard one of the guys speaking English. I think the reason why we can't track Meg anymore is because she's no longer in Japan." Amy finished.

"But then who…I at least had a list of possible suspects in Japan, but overseas…?"

"I know." Amy said sounding defeated. "My network is scratching its head. Even though we now know those glowing brain things are involved, I haven't been able to get any leads. Just a bunch of stupid rumors."

"Rumors?" Sei asked sounding curious.

"Yeah, but my friend put them through the wringer and they didn't pass. There're too many restrictions in Tokyo right now to get a good network going. Rapt is killing me." Amy said, the familiar whine creeping into her voice. "There was one about the glowing brains being an after effect of Tokyo's heavy pollution rates. There was one about a videogame in cyberspace that could make your brain glow. But I checked that one out and it seemed the informants got it all botched up. It's actually supposed to make your brain melt…I duh know." Amy rolled her eyes, "Although my brain isn't melted."

"Anything else?" Sei questioned.

"I tried to trace it to a pharmaceutical or mainly medical researching companies. Anything that dealt in brain research, lobotomies, the works, and I found that currently in Japan, there are over two-hundred and fifteen companies that specialize in such fields. And out of the two-hundred and fifteen, seventy-nine have foreign divisions." She took a big breath, "And out of the seventy-nine, thirty-four are based in countries where English is the predominant language. Then taking that number, I found out that almost sixty percent of those companies are U.S. based."

"But maybe those two things have nothing in common." Sei said, she hated to second-guess Amy's information, but these things did happen. "It could be a fluke."

"Oh, there's a ninety-nine percent chance that all of this could just be a big flop. Trust me." Amy said with a tired dismissal of the hand.

"Ninety-nice percent chance, huh?" Sei pondered as she turned to look at the other angel present in the room, who had been quietly listening to her and Amy going back and forth.

"What's our one percent chance?" Sei asked, still keeping her eyes on Jo.

"Well it's in…New York City."

* * *

It was like a barren wasteland, the dusty streets, the monochrome backdrop, the lifeless and pent-up rails of fencing that twisted and turned around each corner, scaling around every building with an aura of rejection, of denial for anyone walking these streets.

It'd been a long time since she'd last seen her old stomping grounds.

It'd also been a long time since she'd navigated through it dark, mazelike alleyways and sewer systems.

This place had once been a home for her and Meg.

They had gone through a lot here

And even though it seemed so far away in memory, like years ago instead of a year, Jo couldn't get over the feeling that this place held a special meaning for her, because it had been here that she had found Meg…or really, Shirley had found her and then Meg had yelled at her and then kept her.

She remembers those quiet days spent robbing ATM machines and corrupt, back-alley stores. And she remembers watching Meg splurge all their money in one fantastic go at Coney Island or at an uptown Manhattan boutique that really didn't suit them in any way, but Meg having forced herself through—like many things— would always be indignant to leave without purchasing something. There were many other little incidents like those while they lived in New York, and she had never fully understood a lot of what was happening while with Meg, but the girl had promised her. One day, when they had been sitting out on a rickety balcony that was clearly not suitable for relaxing purposes, Meg had promised her. Had explained to her that since she was the boss—Meg was very bossy—that all she had to do was follow her lead.

_There's nothing to it at all, and thinking about stupid stuff like that will only take the fun out of living those moments._

Meg, she noticed, had a strange way of translating seemingly complicated matters into simple terms. The term here being…"have fun" instead of worrying about when the next meal was coming, or why where those guys shooting at them, or where were they going to sleep tonight since they'd spent all there remaining money on the Ferris wheel ride.

She didn't know it back then, but those moments, each and every one of them she had lived and in that life, she had been deliriously happy.

Life had been so simple back then.

And with that thought, Jo could feel her reality pulling her back into the fold. She was turning another gray corner, blurred with trash and the rusted paint of a dumpster.

She immediately spotted the shadow of the informant, the man obscuring his face with a baseball cap and hood, and even though they were hidden within this dark gem of a maze and the outside seemed like another universe trapped on the other side of one of those impossibly high guard fences she had passed by, he was still being extra cautious.

"Jesus Christ, you're only a kid." She heard, before she could even walk all the steps needed to put her face to face with this man. "Crap, what the hell did you get me mixed up in." The man complained, as he flopped off his hat and dusted it on his pants so he could get a good look at her. "Bailan's fucking crazy," he looked her over with an annoyed, frustrated and almost pitiful stare, like she was some orphan begging for money and blocking his way to get it. And Jo guessed right off the bat that this mystery informant was a family man.

She even spotted a ring on his finger.

"Little kid, you betta get outta here. I ain't drownin' in the blood of no minor. You understand?" He shook his head and it looked like he was preparing to leave. Like he was preparing to leave her in this pitfall of an alleyway, completely clueless and hopeless without any leads for Meg.

Jo pulled out her Desert Eagles on him almost instinctually, like he was going to do her bodily harm instead of mental with his abandonment of this case. It had almost been two weeks since Meg's kidnapping, an agonizing two weeks of waiting and pondering. Of scrapping together money from missions and funds from Sei's grandfather whose reputation as of recent had suddenly tanked in the worse ways possible.

Tokyo was in complete chaos.

And she had learned through Sei that a mysterious rival faction had vetoed Bailan's power and future and submerged them into the depths of another. Like a shark swallowing a fish, or a hawk snatching the snake up into the sky, Bailan's dragon was no longer the ruler of heaven and earth. Sei was officially on the run, as she was the one true heir to the clan and it had almost seemed like destiny's puzzle piece when they'd taken that flight out of a fast deteriorating Tokyo. It had almost been too convenient.

And here they were, with everyone practically running on their last legs. With her this close to breaking apart and this…man had the audacity to dismiss her so easily, to turn his back on her and not even give her the time of day. Well he was lucky she had only pulled out her guns instead of just going ahead and firing.

"You _don't_ have the option of taking another job." She said, the anger and the frustration and everything else straining her voice. "You _will_ lead me to where they're keeping Meg," the man wide-eyed and shocked from the sudden threats tensed up expectantly when she shoved the mouth of her pistol under his chin, "And you _will_ do it with a fucking smile on your face." She growled out and it was apparent that she would kill him if he'd said no, or she'd torture him for information, family man or not, Meg was the only person she could think about and call her selfish or ignorant, but Meg was the only one that mattered.

She could see beads of sweat collecting between his thin eyebrows; there was a deep scar under his lip, the skin there gnarled like a tree root and taking in the topography of this man's face, Jo concluded it was also like a wasteland. It was like everywhere she turned she encountered that hopeless, dead feeling and that everyone around her was feeling it as well.

Like they were all mirrors reflecting each other's wounds.

This place was meant to drain the life from people.

"Walk." She seethed under her breath. She remembered Sei explaining that this man would no doubt lead them to where they had to go. It had taken a little over a week of pitfall leads and exhaustive pavement grinding, but they had found a lead and she had practically ran out the door when Sei had given her the news. She didn't give a shit for this man's life; she didn't even give a shit for her own. She hadn't been given the choice in the matter; she couldn't just drop this man off somewhere and leave their search at that.

It wasn't an option.

"Move, or I'll fuckin' blow your head off." And he was walking now, tripping over himself in the alleyway until they had come out into the almost deserted streets, walked until they'd found the subway and taken an express towards this man's workplace.

She had her hands in the pockets of her flight jacket; the steel of the gun was cool against her fingertips even though stuffed in the warm fabric of her pocket. This man understood what a gesture like that meant and he wasn't about to tempt faith in order to find out the full extent of it either.

"This is it." He said, and Jo watched him carefully exit from the car, she was following behind closely, keeping him within reach in case he felt jumpy and wanted to bolt on her. They had walked until they were coming across a rundown building with boarded up windows and fencing all around.

He stopped. "You follow my lead, alright." He threw a glance back at her and she slid her guns back into the hostlers and zipped up her jacket.

The doorway she noticed had a number over it and one side was painted green for some odd reason.

"I brought another one." The informant said casually to another man, this one looking like he was in his early twenties. He had expensive shades on and a jacket that had an army patch on the arm.

"He doesn't look that tough." The man said, and Jo not paying much attention to the easy conversation between these two, a sort of comradeship being expressed by their familiarity in speech, tried to see if the man was packing any heat.

"Hey boy, you ever killed anybody?" The man with the shades suddenly asked and she didn't know if she was supposed to say yes or no, so she answered truthfully, "Plenty." The man looked skeptical. "What kinda punks you bringin' us, eh Tommy?" Despite his words the man rapped his fingers against the door and as if it was some signal, the door opened and the man let them pass.

"Go on ahead, street urchin."

Jo wasn't annoyed by the comment, because she was too busying checking out the interior and her potential opponents. She saw two men at the back of what appeared to be a rundown billiard room, but that wasn't what caught her eye.

It was the man at the forefront, standing next to a crate that seemed to serve the purposes of a table, as he smoked a cigarette and drank stale coffee between puffs.

He had a white coat on.

He looked like a doctor.

"Hey Mavors, I brought you somebody." They stopped in front of this man as he, flecking a bored gaze over to them, responded flatly, "Not interested, go sell your breakables somewhere else, Thomas."

"Shit, look you're not even goin' to look this one over. This guys on the up and up. Just check him out. He really wants to try some of the good stuff." Tommy nudged her in the stomach and she walked forward.

"Just take 'im in the back room and if you don't think he's up for it, then shit, the drinks'll be on me later. What'dya say?"

The man called Mavors stubbed his cigarette out in his chipped coffee mug, "How about you promise me to never, ever bring me out for "drinks" hmm? That seems like a fine exchange."

Tommy looked kind of offended, "Yeah, okay, just go. I gotta get back to the Misses, yuh know how they get."

"Hardly," the doctor answered back, hitching his glasses up on his straight nose and beckoning her forward with a white-gloved hand. "This way boy." They passed the other two men in the room, and like some cue had been switched, both men were getting up from their card game and following after them. They walked through another set of doors, these ones however were much newer looking, and much more fortified, as they were steel framed. They opened electronically and suddenly Jo was thrust into the darkness.

She heard the clipped footsteps of the man named Mavors in front of her, "Since it takes a bit of walking, how about we get to know each other. Is that alright?" The man asked smoothly and Jo remained silent, as she knew he wasn't waiting for her answer.

"What's your medical history?" He began like this was the most natural thing in the world to talk about. "Have you ever broken any bones? Punctured in the foot by a nail with tetanus? Have you ever suffered a concussion to the head? What about STDs? Young people are rife with those." The man said, his tone lighter and almost funny and Jo didn't know what to say.

So she went with the general answer of no.

"You're a real talker. I like you." He said and they were suddenly strolling out of that darkness and into a brightly lit room.

She could hear a rhythmic beeping sound.

"Bellona." He called out and she could suddenly hear the clicking of heels as they came out from behind a large computer.

A young woman with black hair and glasses came out. She was very pretty and Jo didn't understand how she fitted into this picture. Or even how the doctor fitted into this picture, as he seemed strangely out of place in this dilapidated building and rundown atmosphere.

His clothes were neat, he was clean-shaven, and he had a certain polished look about him, with his exceptionally shiny, black shoes and white, starched doctor's coat.

Both of them seemed so out of place.

"He's very young." The woman said in a calm and steady voice.

"Just think of it as another way to manipulate god's will." He told her and they were both studying her with keen, clinical gazes.

Something in the air smelt like aspirin and over expired cough syrup.

She felt like gagging.

The two men behind her were shuffling about, their steps heavy compared to the two doctors in front of her. She had to get rid of them before she could question the pair and wring them of all the information they could give her.

When she had turned back to them, they were both regarding him with lidded but sharp eyes and mouths that looked slightly like they were smiling at her. Their gazes seemed to trap her and dissect into her at the same time. Like a scalpel was trailing over the skin of her neck, like fingers were plucking the hair on her head, one strand at a time.

"Terribly naïve too." The woman added and turned to her partner. "Glenford will be pleased."

"That senile fool." The other man spat back.

"You shouldn't speak of him that way." The woman silkily responded.

Jo pulled out her guns, but before she could point them at the two in front of her, or even take out the two behind, she heard the ripple of a bullet slinging it's way into skin and digging into bone.

One of the men behind her fell down dead, hitting the floor like a ton of bricks. He hadn't even been given the chance to breathe his last breath.

"If you think we deal in hostage negotiations, let me bury that silly notion right now." Another bullet rang out, like a death knell, a heavy bell abruptly tolling for a funeral, no need for the casket, as the body was being hefted and thrown into a naked grave.

The second man died with his eyes open.

The woman had perpetrated the gunshot. Her hands steady as her arms came to her sides, the gun almost forgotten like she hadn't just killed two of her own men.

"I'll be sure to get someone to go after our dear friend Mr. Thomas when this has all been dealt with." Mavors, ever the narrator, said with a frown on his face. "Although as poetic justice, we will spare the daughter, since he has brought one of ours back."

"An eye for an eye." The other woman responded mysteriously and Jo was still shocked at what had just transpired here.

She pointed her guns at them and watched the woman tuck hers away, the man proudly displaying his in the open front of his coat.

"Who are you people?" She shouted from across the room and both of them continued to gaze at her, unflinching and strangely calm with a gun pointed at their heads.

"You think its brain damage." Bellona said.

"It could be. I'm not sure. She has quite good reflexes."

This was so unsettling, because she could not wrap her head around the idea that guns didn't faze people. It was like she wasn't even in the room, the way these two were conversing with each other.

She shot a screen to show she meant business.

"Please be careful around the equipment." Bellona's motherly advice was so diametrically opposed to her passive, neutral actions that it made her even more confused.

"Where's Meg?" She shouted, and they were both looking fake quizzical for a moment, before responding in unison, "She's safe."

And like that was the clearing force she needed, the murkiness in her head suddenly evaporated. She understood what she had to do now. She had to get them to talk. They were human; they'd talk with pain and blood. She would get the information out of them and she would save Meg.

"Tell me!" She shouted and they were again ignoring her and conversing quietly with each other. Both of them seemed to be the epitome of calm, like a wind traveling through a distorting mist and clearing it away, swiftly but peacefully. They were like clear glacier ice, untainted by mud, and soil and rocks and garbage.

She moved towards them, and the man was suddenly pulling out his…cell phone and dialing a number. She didn't know why, but she stopped.

He put the receiver out to her, like he wanted her to take it. He even made a motion with his hands. "Go on. It's not going to bite you."

She looked at it, stared at it like it was a precipice before a dark plunge.

"Don't you want to talk to her?" Mavors added again, and suddenly she could hear it. It was Meg's voice. It was Meg's voice coming from the phone and she was crying and screaming and something within her seemed to die at that moment.

She reached her hands out and the man snapped the phone close.

"Well we can't spend too much time here, but you may feel free to browse around, find some clues here and there. We will surely keep the breadcrumb trail going for as long as you'd like to follow."

It was panic that made her suddenly leap forward towards the pair, panic and blind rage and hate, and she wanted to kill them. She wanted to kill them and watch their blood dry on her hands. She wanted to snap the woman's neck and slice the man's mouth's from each side. Two lateral cuts that would trail up his jaw and end under eyes that were gray and cold and would become even colder when she ripped them out of his sockets.

However before she could get to them, bars burst up from the floor, abruptly cutting off her path and she slammed up against them, watching in sheer horror as the pair was already making their way toward another door and briskly walking out and leaving her behind.


	15. Time's Attempt to Catch Up

She fucked it up.

She really fucked it up.

"We might have to pull back from this. Oh Jo, that was my only lead on this case."

"Do you know if they killed the informant?"

She had fucked it up so much and now…

"Dammit!"

* * *

There had been a timer on the cage, so after an hour of cursing and kicking and screaming at her bad luck, the timer had kicked in and she was now being released from her prison.

Those two had been long gone.

They had left and the only thing she could do was curse at their existence and riffle through their things.

She found something interesting.

* * *

"It's an address."

"To?"

"Some laboratory."

"It's gotta be a trap."

"We have no leads, I'll take a trap over a nonexistent path any day."

"Jo, you shouldn't be rash."

"Then what the hell am I supposed to do? Twiddle my thumbs and wait for another dickless moron to show up."

* * *

She hadn't meant to yell. She really hadn't. It was just…she was so tired and frustrated.

Sei had asked her to go and take a nap.

So now she was in her room, and when the knock and the "have a goodnight" was doled out, she turned off the lights and called out her own greeting so Sei would know she was still in here.

She waited a minute and then walking over to the window of her hotel room, she'd unlatched it and flung it open.

A burst of cold wind hit her in the face and looking down at the thirty stories she had to descend, she realized that this was going to take a while.

* * *

The Collis Quirinalis Laboratory was an independent firm with a mysterious sponsor that majorly backed all research material and experiments.

These facilities, however had been abandoned six months ago.

The reason had not been disclosed to the public, but there was a good chance that the backer had pulled his funding and left the laboratory high and dry.

There were six more such facilities all over America.

One in Washington, California, Texas, Florida, Pennslyvania and Illinois.

All of them had been either abandoned, or already bulldozed.

Jo, climbing up the wall and scanning the ground below could clearly see a guard at the entrance. She didn't understand why an abandoned building would need a security system.

It seems that her bad luck was finally starting to clear up.

She jumped over the wall, and running along the shadows that the thick maple trees had created, she passed by the security guard and pressed herself against the wall around the corner. She could see the ledge of a window above her and using one of those huge maple trees, she was able to make it to the window and jump through to the second floor.

There were rows of metal filing cabinets, each neatly separated by colored labels and numbers. There were fifteen in all.

This was proabably going to take all night.

**

* * *

**

**Two hours later**

It was in the seventh filing cabinet with a green tab on the side that Jo had finally found something worth taking. There was a folder that had a detail by detail account of a brain transplant performed on one Jacob Kailer, a med student who'd been in a car accident a day prior to his surgery. He'd just graduated from Havard. The account was told from the senior two neurosurgeons on the job at the time, a Lucius Bask and a Maya Tsukimura. They'd gone onto explain that the surgery had been a failure due to too much trauma inflicted during the accident. He died on the operating table at 8:04 am on the 23rd of March. The year had not been given.

Jacob Kailer had died, but that wasn't what had caught Jo's attention.

It was the fact that he had arrived at the hospital _dead _and was reanimated after for two whole minutes by foreign brain matter, before passing away again.

The doctors had called it a failed experiment.

They'd even gone on to critisize the man's education. Calling him nothing but a "sheep" and a "vegetable." They'd even wrote something about his higher education, how he had been noted as a genius in the field of cardiosurgical procedures. They'd even written that his knowlegde _should_ have spared him. That his brain had plenty of room to evolve, but the medicine and the sample had not taken to him.

He was disposed of immediately.

There were also information on another project. A project that was proclaimed as a success by other unfamiliar doctors and scientists. They kept refering to it as the Genocide Angels Prototype. There was genetical engineering involved. The DNA of hundreds of girls were specifically tweaked. Some had died in the process, some had "evolved" and others had completely gone insane. This was the overall analysis of the project.

_Ave Maria, our blessed Virgin has surpassed our other candidates. She is the vessel in which our hopes and dreams are carried. The Angelic Salutation is currently being withheld however due to complications on the final judgement. She will be our martyr._

There were biblical context such as this popping up from time to time throughout the summary. It was most likely a coded system. Jo couldn't really tell, since this was not her forte. She would have to give this to Amy or Sei and have them figure it out, but by the mean time she had to collect more data.

When she went to pick up another folder, what looked like a leather bound book had fallen out and plopped dustily down on the floor. She picked it up, inspected the old, tanned cover, unpolished and rough to the touch. It smelled like cigarettes. She played with the thin buckle that opened it before she leafed through the pages, noticing that these were all journal entries. They were logged in by a superficial method of month and date. There was still no sign of a year.

On the front inside cover, there was a little note scrawled in fancy charcoal cursive lettering. It said, _"To my Dearest Lucius, from your Moon Flower."_

_02/23 _

_Each scientist pair is allocated the girl in which they're own genes have been placed. Testtubes will be the ideal raising conditions. They do not want the Angels to be given live birth for fear of contamination by the human mother. The testtubes will be safer._

_02/25 _

_Subject 011 and subject 013 are showing signs of albinoism. Both hair and eyes have taken on lighter pigments. 013 seems to be more affected. I did not know that we had the potential recessive genes for this trait. She is also showing potential signs of dopamine fluctuations, which is directly effecting her memory and attention span. The Professor has upped her dosage. If this is not corrected her brain's motor loop and all the nerves that move the spinal column will be in danger. She might be terminated as a possible candidate. _

_03/16 _

_013 is one successive miracle after another. The Professor has ordered that she be put in isolation. Her healing and adaptive capacities are far superior than any of the other Angels. Her dopamine fluctuations still pose a threat. The doctor is pumping her diet with L-DOPA. It's up to her metabolism and central nervous system to correct her unbalanced Dopamine levels. But within a week, I believe she will put through. _

_05/01 _

_I'm starting to have doubts about this project. Glenford visited us today. He was on one of his usual tirades. He doesn't understand how special 013 is. He focuses completely on Ave Maria. He's a fool. I see he's also taken a liking to Maya. He wants her to come work for him. I wish she'd just tell him to stop coming around. I'm a fool with a loose tongue. Today I accidently called 013 by the name I'd wanted to give her. The Professor said that was incredibly unprofessional and that I was in danger of losing my job if this kind of behavior persisted. I don't understand what's so wrong with wanting to give…she's practically my daughter for goodness sake! She came from Maya and me. Why shouldn't I want to give her a name? _

_05/23 _

_It's barbaric what they do to these girls. I'm a monster. Maya wants to run away, and she wants to take her with us. She's suffering from the dosage. She lies comatose in bed sometimes, but she gets up by sheer will power when the drill bell sounds. It's not right. _

05/30

_She does not cry. I don't think she's capable of it. I've witnessed the other girls in solitary confinement. They understand there is something lacking within them and even though they have not been exposed to a normal environment in which a teenage girl should be raised, they understand they are deprived of it. They are deprived of something essential. I wonder if the Professor has a drug for this. He probably does. She, however does not recognize this feeling like the other girls. Her and 011. They do not cry like the other girls. _

_06/21 _

_Maya's had a mental breakdown. Glenford the conniving snake has taken her out of the department on the excuse that it is too much for her. That is preposterous. This is a medical facility. This is the best place to treat her. He is such a fool. _

_07/15 _

_Today is the day. The final judgement. Maya is at rest in a hospital in NYC. Glenford has plans to make her his secretary. How quaint he is. 013 is still suffering from her dosage levels but I know she will push on. She's like a robot. She isn't human. I finally understand that. I should have never tried to give her name. It was foolish of me…to dream. It was a pretty name though. I thought it suited her. I thought she would answer to it. I had called her by it when we were preparing them to leave for the last exercise. However she did not raise her head when I had called her Cerise. She had only stared at me blankly. I am a fool. _

_07/16 _

_She is dead, but Ave Maria is neither the victor nor the loser. She is crazed. That child is so starved for affection and it's so apparent. Why does the Professor keep her on those drugs? She is bi-polar. Doesn't he see that? He's giving her the wrong drugs, and I believe he's doing it on purpose._

_09/01 _

_Ave Maria has killed a man named Carl Tekas, the doctor who is in charge of her diet. She slaughtered him in the bathroom. When we checked her room, we found another doctor, a Selena Dale, the woman had been tortured to death and was thrown under her bed. Ave Maria is insane.._

She closed the book with a final sounding thump.

That had been…weird. This doctor…Lucius. If she found him, she knew she would get the answers she needed. She needed to find this man. She needed to find the woman too.

Finally a lead.

Jo, grabbing what she needed from the cabinets, she tucked them away in her jacket, left the laboratory through the window and headed back to the hotel so she could get Amy and Sei on this pronto.

**

* * *

**All the definations taken off of Wikipedia

**1)**Ave Maria, another name for Mary, the mother of Jesus. I really believe that's what they named her after, because of the whole angel concept and also the play on another trinity in this story, Jo, Maria and that other girl with the black hair. For the life of me, I can't remember her name.

**2)**Angelic Salutation-the Hail Mary prayer, from latin Ave Maria (Salutatio Angelica). The Catholic and orthodox prayer calling for the intercession of Mary.

**3)** Collis Quirinalis-one of the seven hills of Rome. They stand for the state bureaucracy. Named after Quirinus, his name derives from _co-viri_ "men together"; as such, he embodied the military and economic strength of the Roman _populus_ collectively. He also watched over the _curia_ "senate house" and _comitia curiata_ "tribal assembly", the names of which are cognate with his own. I'm making a parallel with someone.


	16. Keybearer

**Name:** Lucius Bask

**Sex:** Male

**Age:** 44

**Hair:** Black

**Eyes:** Brown.

**Height:** 6'1

**Weight:** 171 lbs.

**Occupational status: **Active (w/ Honorary Doctorate in Neurology & Masters in Psychology)

**Employer:** H.A.A (The Harlem Asylum Association)

Jo, crumpling the piece of paper with the data that Amy had dragged up from her network—a painstaking two more days of waiting—wished that with this information, there had been a picture to go along.

* * *

She resisted against the guards holding her, just enough so it would look normal, like Sei had told her to and for all her troubles she got a tighter squeeze on the arm and a forceful shove.

"Get in there. Dammit, she's just a kid and she's already this nuts."

"How's Isaac doing?"

"His left arms completely dislocated.

"Fuckin' kid."

"You tellin' me. Lock her ass up and throw away the key."

"Shouldn't we let Juvee handle her?"

"Naw, they'll send her right back to us. The only thing we can do is wait for Dr. Bask. I ain't goin' in there with no psycho."

The two burly guards walked down the echoing hallways, leaving her to stew on the cell bunker and wait for the appropriate time to click on the communication earpiece.

"Amy, you read me?"

"Loud and clear, Cerise."

Jo gave a long-suffering sigh. "Why are you calling me that?"

"Because we need code names and I thought it suited you."

"How many times did you read that report?"

"About ten times. I had to be thorough."

"Well whatever."

"You can call me Carnation. It's light pink."

Jo looked at her earpiece and didn't say much after that as the girl blabbed blueprints and security systems in her ear.

Jo switched off the communicator and waited for the doctor to come to her.

* * *

"Hey Doc, this ones a whack-job, so be careful around her."

"I will." Voices floated from down the hollow corridors, the click of slick and black oxfords echoing of the walls and Jo sat up straight on the moth-eaten bunk mattress she had been lying on.

A man with a white doctor's coat peered into the cell, his face obscured by the flickering light bulb, but his eyes, sharp, coal eyes cut straight through the darkness and Jo immediately recognized the stare.

It was Mavors!

"Hello in there. Why the long face?" He called out and she couldn't understand how this could have happened or why he had a name badge that read "Dr. Lucius Bask."

The guard spoke then, moving to open the cell door with his jingly keys, "You'd swear she'd seen a ghost or something."

"Silly girl." The doctor said, moving towards her now that bars didn't separate them.

"Do you have a death wish?" It was the first thing to come out of her mouth and it was the last thing the guard heard when he walked out of the cell and cracked a smile and told the good doctor that he would be two doors down and packing enough tranquilizers to bring down an elephant if need be.

The doctor, ignoring the guard, smiled at her like she'd told him a joke with a bad punch line, "Not particularly. No." He assured her and then he was walking closer.

"Where's Meg?"

"You're like a broken record."

"Where's Meg?"

The doctor sighed and moved to the other side of the cell where the sink was located. He washed his hands and dried them off with the edge of his coat.

"I'll tell you, but you must promise to be good."

"So where's Meg?"

"Oh good grief." He laughed a little and Jo could suddenly see the lines around his mouth. In this place, with its gray concrete walls and its bare bulb light, his face looked older, used up, like time had taken him for a dance and then dumped him on some random doorstep. "Young love, is it? I haven't felt that in quite a long time."

Why was he suddenly talking to her like this? It was so different from that first time, when he had mocked her and been cruel, withholding information from her that she had desperately needed. What had changed between them?

"I see you're not even questioning your good luck with all the open paths before you. To busy following the breadcrumbs."

She narrowed her eyes at him in incomprehension.

"The Professor knows that you're digging around. He knows someone's been sneaking into his business. I suggest you tell your little hacker friend to quit while she's ahead, or the little dear might find herself in more trouble than she bargained for." He brushed some lint of his black, uniform pants absently like his words were of no consequence despite the warning underneath it.

"You really do have a one-track mind, eh? That's the problem with the Angel Prototypes. They stick to one thing and only one thing, while they don't focus on any of the repercussions or the effects their decisions can make. It's almost ironic, they're strong as tens of men, but they have the mental capacity of children. They're too sheltered to understand what actually goes on."

What was he talking about?

"C'mon, I don't have much time." He opened the cell with a spare key and walked out, she followed behind at a safe distance and when they passed the guard, the man made a squawk of protest.

"She'll be good. I'm just going to take her to Juvee now. It's cruel to lock up a youngster in a place like this."

* * *

It had been a two-hour drive and he had talked every minute, of every second of that two-hour span.

Jo thought her head was going to explode.

"You're the strong and silent type, hmm? I bet girls fall in love with that left and right." He said teasingly and Jo wanted to punch him through the car window. "Ah, why don't you humor this old man, we can't all be heartbreakers, now can we?"

This conversation was getting stupider and stupider as time progressed and Jo wasn't sure if she should smash his head against the steering wheel, or her own.

"She's very pretty." He said out of the blue and Jo had actually gotten a tick in her eye.

"You go for the big-chested ones, don't you?"

The tick was steadily turning into a murderous glare.

"Oh don't look at me like that. I'm just joshing with you. You really don't have a sense of humor, do you?"

Well if he counted her wanting to throw him out of the car and into any nearby pothole then no, she supposed she didn't have a sense of humor.

"I pride myself on these father, son moments."

Huh? She turned her head in his direction and she noticed he had this small, knowing smile on his face as he abruptly stopped in front of an abandoned hospital. Jo's attention cut back to her surroundings and she immediately got the feeling that this would be the usual landscape for most of the places she would come to visit in NYC.

That thought didn't sit too well with her.

They'd walked up about three flights of stairs before the doctor opened a door and walked in. There were dusty papers littered all over the floor and more cobwebs than she could poke a stick at. She hoped distractedly that they hadn't kept Meg in a place with cobwebs.

Meg hated spiders.

A sudden, sharp pang shot through her chest and it was like she was choking on the air in her lungs.

"Meg?" She said, turning to Mavors so he could understand that she didn't want to wait.

He smiled at her and then pressed a button on the wall. There was an elevator and she could hear it creak as it came up from the pits of wherever it had been submerged.

"It's quite new. Don't worry about that noise. It just keeps people from being too nosy."

It dinged open and he stepped in easily, Jo following anxiously behind.

After a five-minute ride, they'd been let out into a dark room that smelled like unfermented alcohol and wet mold. There was something underlying the other smells, something pungent and Jo could taste it bitterly in the air when she swiped her tongue over her chapped bottom lip.

"Oh that's just the type of formaldehyde we use. Strong stuff."

He walked briskly to another room, a larger room. It was practically a replica of the room that she'd been trapped in on first meeting Mavors, even down to the beeping noises that came from the large computers caging in the room and making it more compact and blocky, and the sounds of drips from a saline machine.

She looked around, her eyes scouring the darkness for a lock of red hair, but there wasn't a trace of it. She felt a sinking feeling in her heart…but she really had no one to blame. The doctor had never told her that Meg would be here…She had just hoped…

An ominous-looking glass cylinder tank with black bands on both the top and the bottom stood in the middle of the room. It had immediately caught her attention because it was the only thing that was different from the other room. She moved towards it and the doctor stopped her with a shake of the head.

He suddenly switched on the lights and Jo could hear something powering up, like a juiced battery pack. She moved quickly towards the tank, unhearing of the doctor's gestures for her to wait there and stopped to peer through the glass and cloudy liquid that separated her from the contents of the tank.

Mavors came to stand next to her and said unexpectedly, "Jo meet Miss Ave Maria, Genocide Angel Prototype number 011." He said this without even blinking his eyes as he continued to look straight ahead at the tank.

Jo's felt a sharp twinge in her chest, like someone was pinching the muscle between fingernails.

She recognized this face…

Even if that face didn't have a body attached to it anymore, wires dangling out of the meeting place of a neck, so many wires that the throat was practically invisible and the sides of the tank were meshed in it like seed weed.

"You remember meeting her a short while ago, don't you?

This was…that girl. The one who had followed her into that other dimension and had attacked her with a Cybot. The one who had talked to her, threatened her, urged her and…

It was all such a blur…

"Maria had escaped to come after you. She wasn't supposed to seek you out yet and apparently that was the sealing nail in her coffin. This is what happens when the people in charge can't control a suject anymore. They string you up like a Christmas tree and study you until they can't preserve anymore."

Jo placed her hands on the glass, peered deeper into the murky water that was now the resting place for this person who had confused and angered her those months ago.

"I don't think you should stand so close." Mavors warned and she had looked away for a brief second before turning back and feeling like her heart had caved into her chest. The head had its eyes opened now, fusia pink eyes that didn't blink and looked like they were very close to becoming detached from the retinas.

A voice hit her in the back of the head, like a block of ice. A familiar draining voice that she had recognized as the one from a few weeks ago when her terror had started.

_"How's it been Jo?" _

"You!"

Mavors moved in to intercept her when she'd pointed her heavy guns at the tank.

"Calm down. She's not really the one to blame for this, so put that damn thing away." Mavors told her and for some reason, she didn't know why, but she had actually listened. There was something about his voice and his expression that was familiar and it quieted her.

She turned her naked and raw gaze on him, "Then who is to blame?"

"Me and about two dozen other scientists who've been working steadily on this project for the last ten years."

"Explain." She curtly said and the irritation in her voice had come back.

He nodded once, went over to a desk and opened the top drawer with a key from his pocket. He tossed a manila folder at her.

"Open that up."

And she did. She was suddenly staring into a face she had never seen before, but immediately recognized by the striking similarity to her own.

It was a picture of her from when she was younger.

"What is this?" She looked at him beseechingly because her past was always an unknown to her and for it to be so suddenly thrust into her face like this was unsettling.

"You've always felt different, haven't you?" He asked, like she had given him some hint to this feeling.

She said nothing, but it was painfully obvious it was true.

"There's a reason for that." He said almost noncommittally. "There's a reason for all of this. You've read about it in my journal, all the reports. What do you think all those things mean. You were apart of that project…"

_"Hehehehe."_

Jo, despite the doctor's words pulled her gaze away from him and turned towards the tank.

_"Isn't is lovely? You're one of us. A failed experiment, or soon to be. They've found you, they've been asking a lot of questions about you and I had to give them the answers, I had to tell them where you lived, what you were thinking, what you were dreaming about…"_

"Shut up." It wasn't yelled but given under her breath, a plea.

She turned to the doctor. "Is that true?"

He looked at her strangely and then told her, "I can't hear the conversations that go on between you and Maria without the machines behind me turned on." Jo looked at him, and then realized he was telling the truth. He explained, "When we were going through the basics of the project, it was decided on that the Angels would be given the ability to keep in contact with each other via a mental link. However all the experiments for such a telepathic link failed. Only three out of the many girls could utilize such a link." He pointed at her, he pointed at the tank containing the remains of Maria, and he pointed at the folder in Jo's hands, the one with the countless bios and statistic charts on each girl that was born into the project.

"You remember Larva, don't you Jo? She had a weaker mental link up with you, but she was still able to track you down."

Jo looked on in horror as this man recounted in detail things that even she did not understand about her life, but were now starting to make sense to her as he continued.

"They've been using this link between you and Maria to track you down. They've been tracking since Maria came into contact with you months ago."

"Why?" And her voice had come out sounding sad and defeated. For what purposes would someone go through all this trouble to track her, to take away the thing that mattered most to her, to make her so utterly miserable that she contemplated taking a gun to her head and blasting a hole through it.

"They want a new martyr." He said cryptically and then he was writing down something hurriedly on a piece of paper. "Here." He thrust it at her forcefully and said, "Take it. It's what you've been searching for all this time."

She didn't understand why this man would help her like this. She didn't understand what was going on and suddenly the electrical crack of her eyepiece was buzzing and she picked it up and answered, "Cerise here."

Amy was telling her to come back, because there was a major signal disturbance and they wouldn't be able to hold communication for long if that happened. "On my way." She said and she was tucking the earpiece back into her shirt and looking at the doctor.

He had a surprised look on his face and she tried to not be affected by it.

"Cerise." He said and she couldn't tell if it was a question or just the simple pronunciation of the code name. "Your…code name?" He asked strangely and she nodded her head.

She answered "yeah" and she didn't know why she was answering his question, or even continuing, "It was in the file I stole at Collis Quirinalis Laboratory."

"Of course." He said and his eyes were glazed over.

"Yeah." She said again because this was getting kind of awkward and she usually never felt this way.

"Do you like it?" And Jo hadn't been expecting a question like that to come out of nowhere and hit her on the side of the head.

"I don't hate it." She answered truthfully.

He smiled then, something dried up and small, but concrete and he waved her off. "Alright then."

**

* * *

A/n: **Jo doesn't know that she's 013 so therefore she's not going to know that her father is actually Mavors/Lucius Bask. I wished they'd showed us who Jo's biological parents were in the anime, because she had to come from somewhere, even though they were born in test tubes. There had to be the donors. Also, I made up the whole 013 and 011 numbers for the project, because I liked these better and I thought 013 would symbolize how unlucky Jo was.


	17. Hidden Gateway

Damn if she ever needed Django, right now would be as good a time as ever.

There were just too many enemies to clip away at with her guns and too many obstacles to climb over, literally.

There were just too many.

And Meg was inside that building.

She knew she was.

And she wasn't leaving here without Meg.

* * *

Meg frowning at a certain spot on the ceiling, sighed loudly as she remembered that she had already counted that tile and it was there that she had lost her count.

This was stupid.

Giving up, she rolled over on her stomach and tried to go to sleep.

She couldn't fall asleep on her stomach, so she rolled over to her side, and when that didn't pan out too well, she rolled onto her back again.

She was met again with the same square tile that had made her lose count. "Uhhh," she groaned and sat up on the stiff cot. Her bare feet touching the cold floor of her cell, as she peered out through the small, barred window that gave her hope.

A guard passed by.

So much for hope.

It was going onto two weeks. Two weeks in this hellhole with nothing to read, nothing to wear—they had put her in a hospital gown, a hospital gown! For the love of fashion sense—and they had fed her nothing but nasty, smushy food that she had thought only babies and severely injured people ate.

It was hell.

She still had hope though.

Jo was going to get her.

Jo would definitely come get her.

She hoped Jo would come get her!

It couldn't be much longer.

All she had to do was wait for Jo. Good ole' dependable Jo, who was strong as a bull and tough like as a tank. Jo would get here and she would rescue her and they would ride off into the sunset and…

Eat pizza.

God she had a craving for pizza.

Pizza, and gum, and chips and every unhealthy, fried, battered greasy food she could get her hands on.

She was so hungry.

She was so damn hungry.

And she hadn't slept a good, decent sleep for days now.

God and she didn't even want to know what would happen if she got her period and she was still in this god-damned cell, with bad food, and bad sleeping arrangements and bad—white—clothing.

Would they give her tampons?

Or would they give her pads?

It boggled her how her thought processes worked these days.

It was probably from the lack of nutrition.

Oh god, this was worse than a diet.

She wondered for a second there if she was any skinnier.

And then for another stupid second, she wondered if they would provide her with a scale if she asked for one.

Wow. This was _not_ the time to be thinking about if she could fit into those new jeans she bought three weeks ago.

Jo would like those jeans.

She wondered if she was skinny enough if Jo would notice and compliment her.

Dammit she wanted pizza!

Meg jumped from the loud noise of the guard thumping his nightstick against her cell door. "You got a visitor missie. Betta behavior and no biting this time, you got me?" The guard warned and he was opening the door and the doctor that she had bitten from last week was walking through the door.

"Hello Meg." A woman with black hair and high heels walked into the padded room, her glasses catching the luminescent light from above and holding it for a second before she turned her head and regarded the tray that Meg had left on the floor.

"You didn't touch your carrots."

"I hate carrots." Meg grumped and she had a mind to bite the woman again for just suggesting the thought that she should eat something that she hated.

"Well you should eat it. Your diet here is very balanced. You're also due for a check-up in about an hour, so you should get yourself ready." The woman said and adjusted her glasses.

Meg looked at her with a disbelieving look. "Are you nuts? Get ready with what? You guys stick me in this room and then expect me to go along with your experiments like I'm Frankenstein or something."

Meg was very close to biting this woman.

She wondered if she would taste like pizza.

She hoped so, because she was fucking hungry.

"Please Meg. You've been in contact with 013. We have to collect all the progressive data we can get before we start on the real thing." The doctor informed her and Meg didn't understand why this woman kept spouting the same nonsense over and over again, when she didn't understand what 013 was and what she had to do with it.

"I'm so sick of you people sticking needles in me and poking and prodding at me like a houseplant. You're so going to be sorry when Jo gets here."

There was an abrupt knock at the door and both occupants of the room looked at the tiny, glass rectangle that let them view the world outside of this cramped cell.

"You got another visitor." The guard called out and soon the door was opening and someone else was being let in. It was another doctor, a doctor that had visited her even more than the lady doctor and Meg snorted as he walked in through the door, white squishy coat and black oxfords tapping against the linoleum floor.

"Hello again." He said in his casual voice.

The lady doctor waved him over.

"She's not eating her carrots." The woman said like it actually mattered.

"Oh that's a shame." The male doctor said, and he was staring at her like _it_ did matter.

These two were obviously senile.

They didn't look a day over thirty though.

But she figured that mentally, old age just caught up to some people much faster than others.

The male doctor had pulled out a clipboard from behind his back, as he flipped through a couple of pages and stopped to read something that had obviously caught his eye.

"You're a normal human." He responded out of nowhere to her.

"I already knew that." You moron! She was about to say, but she didn't know how they would take it and something about calling a scientist a moron didn't sit too right with her.

"Yes, we did too. We were just being nosy."

Huh? God could they make less sense.

"Anyhoo, isn't it time for your weekly checkup," the male doctor said, and he was reaching out his hand for her. "You don't have to worry about a thing." He said to her and also to the female doctor, who was suddenly giving him a weary look, "I'll take her down to the lab right now. You should get back to the Glenford. He'll be waiting." The man said, and Meg could even hear the sneer in his voice, even though she couldn't see it.

"Fine." The female doctor said and she was watching them go, as the male doctor escorted Meg out of the room and into the dark hallway.

He turned to her and smiled.

She didn't smile back for obvious reasons.

He turned away to stare down the hallway and Meg who still had her eyes glued on the doctor, now afforded a side profile was almost startled by the weird resemblance he had to somebody.

She didn't know who exactly, but it was in the face and she just couldn't put her finger on it. There was something about his features…

He wasn't an ugly man…

If anything quite the opposite, but that wasn't what was getting to her.

It was his features and how those features looked so familiar, like the sharp jut of his jaw, or the thin, straight, aristocratic nose, or his eyes and how narrow they were. He didn't look Japanese. She was pretty sure he was white and his English wasn't accented. He spoke perfect English, but he could also speak Japanese fluently so maybe that wasn't such a good method to go by to determine what he was. The woman doctor was Japanese though, because her English still had accents that she could recognize. Meg could proudly say she spoke two languages, since she was originally from New York and when she had come to Japan, she'd had to pick up fast or be unable to live, i.e. go out shopping, purchase yummy foods, and more importantly count money. Money was always money wherever you went.

She looked over back at the doctor, trying to place him in the context of her memories. Her eyes roved over his face again just to be sure that she hadn't missed anything and suddenly her eyes were drawn to his mouth and the small smile that was there. His thin lips crooked up in something that couldn't exactly be called a smile, the man looking all too pleased with himself.

Dammit, where has she seen this expression before?

She had already noticed the weird way he smiled and the equally weird way he spoke to her, a little too familiarly and with touch of sarcasm, like he was dealing with a child.

Rawrrrr. This was going to eat away at her.

"Hey have we met before?" Meg threw out, like they were old time friends and not some twisted relationship of prisoner and the doctor that supervised her.

The smirk had stretched at one corner and Meg could see the man had a certain bounce in his step. "Maybe. Who knows?" He said mysteriously and Meg had always hated having something on the tip of tongue, but unable to recall it or put the puzzle together.

The doctor's long legs cut a swift path down the corridor and Meg, trying to keep up realized that they weren't taking the normal route to the lab.

"Hey, what's going on?" She said, very suspicious and ready to run.

"Nothing." He said and his thin shoulders rose and dropped in a shrug, his lanky stature stopping in front of a certain door, as he seemed to be waiting for something.

"Hey I duh know what you're trying to pull here, but I've got a…"

"A Jo. Yes you do." The doctor said like he didn't have a care in the world and Meg couldn't help but freeze up in her spot. "Oh and here she comes now." The doctor said again, his voice as casual as ever as he pointed behind her.

She didn't know what it was, but her body had frozen stiff and she couldn't move her legs as the doctor continued to point behind her. She didn't know if he was just playing with her, if he knew all about Jo and was just messing with her.

That wasn't nice.

Especially when she had so much hope that Jo would come rescue her and to have had to wait weeks was killing her.

If she turned around and Jo wasn't there…she didn't know what she would do…

"Meg."

All her resistance seemed to melt with that one voice, that familiar, clear, beautiful voice and she was turning around without any conscious effort and starring into the face of the person she had been waiting for, for what felt like forever.

They were just staring at each like this was some kind of quicksand dream world and that world had affixed each to her spot.

"Meg," Jo called out to her again, even reached out her hand like she didn't know what to do and Meg immediately was throwing herself into the arms that were thin and still solid and there.

"JO!" she sobbed and she didn't understand how this could be happening right now, not when she had been prepared to turn around and not meet anything but empty air and even emptier darkness. "Jo." She squeezed tighter and she could feel arms squeezing her back, if even tighter. She closed her eyes and thought that if she died now, it would have all been worth it.

"Ahem." The doctor cut in, not knowing how to tactfully pull them apart.

Jo was clinging to her and it almost felt like she was trembling.

Meg hugged her tighter and didn't think she would let go in this lifetime, didn't want to let go in this lifetime or any other.

"I really hate to cut in like this," the doctor said again, his voice actually sounding apologetic, "but you two should really leave." Jo suddenly had her hands on her and had abruptly pushed her away, but all the while still keeping her grip on the perch of her shoulders. Her fingers were digging into the fleshy skin there, where the hospital gown had done a poor job of covering up, the material of the glove cold compared to her warm skin.

"Right." Jo said and she hadn't pulled her eyes away from Meg when she said this, only stared at her harder, like she was going to vanish if she blinked. She was also suddenly leaning into her.

"Um." The doctor turned around. "Don't mind me ladies." He said and Jo seemed to remember herself and pulled back.

She turned to look at the doctor, "How are we going to get out of here? I can't come the same way I did."

"Don't tell me you climbed all the way up here?" The doctor asked, even though he had seen some pretty amazing things throughout his career working as a scientist for such top corporations and powerful leaders, it still amazed him how stubborn she was.

Meg knew they were high up, but she couldn't tell which floor.

Jo shrugged her shoulders, the motion completely contradictory to the way she was currently holding onto Meg's hand like it was her lifeline. In a way, he supposed it was.

"Only the first 30 stories. I busted a window on the 31st floor. That reminds me, someone will probably notice that." Jo added, absentmindedly.

The doctor sighed and then he was removing his jacket and handing it to Jo. "Here, you'll need this to get out."

Jo slipped it on and noticed the badge on the breast pocket.

"You should tuck that away and use it only when you get down to the front entrance. Just keep your head down and swipe it in the keycard display and the door will let you out. The guards are sparse down there, so don't worry about it too much, especially at this time of the night. They're mostly guarding outside so you'll probably need to create a diversion to get past them, but I'm confident you can do that, as you've already snuck past them to get up here."

He was even handing over his pants and Meg had to look away when she realized what he was doing. She definitely knew something was not right with this guy, if he could so calmly strip down to his boxers in a hallway and hand over his clothes without a second thought.

He was handing over his glasses too and Jo looked through them, slipping them down onto her face and squinting. She looked a bit crossed eyed. Meg restrained the need to laugh, she also restrained the need to hug, because she felt so relieved and happy and stupid, just standing here in the drafty hallway with half her backside out—thankfully she was wearing underwear—and she just couldn't stop herself from grinning and leaning forward and playfully hitching the glasses up higher on Jo's nose.

"You look cute." Meg commented smiling, ready to kiss Jo senseless and then she realized something. Or she recognized the striking similarity that Jo had to the doctor to the side of her, even more so with the lab coat and the glasses.

It was really…freaky.

"I'll see you girls later," the doctor called back, funnily enough in his underwear and his undershirt as he walked down the hallway and left with a wave and not even a glance backwards.

"Hey who was that guy?" Meg asked curious as to what Jo has been up to when she was away.

"Beats me." Jo answered back, already checking her weapons and walking down the hallway. Her one hand latching on Meg's arm and dragging her behind her at a reasonably fast pace. "We don't have much time. They're probably going to notice soon that you're missing, so we have to hurry."


	18. Gods of War

Jo turned another corner, her fingers clamped around Meg's wrist, as they navigated through the mazelike building. Through a steady stream, guards were trickling out into the hallway, and therefore limiting their movements and making it that much harder to get down to the first floor of the building. Even though she was in disguise, it wouldn't be a good idea to throw themselves in a situation where a guard could ask for a keycard. She had one, but surely they would notice that the badge ID didn't match up with the owner.

They could guess why guards were steadily coming out as most likely Meg's captors had already figured out she was past missing. They hadn't run any alarms, as those captors must have guessed that alerting the prisoner to their knowledge of the situation would be less advantageous than letting them think they were in the clear.

Jo knew this, but even with this knowledge it still surprised her when bullets rained down from the side of the building, effectively shattering the windows and scattering the dangerous shards all over the ground. The black RAPT troops had mobilized so stealthily and quickly that it was like a completely different unit. Jo guessed they had specialized training since they were guarding such an important top-secret research facility.

"Crap!" She heard Meg curse, her bare feet unprotected from the shards of glass on the ground. They were currently ducked under a window facing outside; the black RAPT troops stationed right outside, automatic rifles pointed at the building and their other hands gripping onto the repel they'd used to scale down the skyscraper from the rooftops.

"We have to make a run for it." Jo told Meg and Meg looked horrified at the idea of having to hallass down a hallway littered with jagged glass shards. "Don't worry." Jo said flatly, like that would help the oncoming pain. Then Jo stood and returned fire with both her pistols. She was able to take out a majority of the troops, giving them some time before more scaled down the walls. Jo tucked one of her guns in the waistband of her pants, the cold metal pressing into the small of her back as she adjusted it so it wouldn't fall out. She then pulled Meg to her feet, and without missing a beat, grabbed the other girl around the waist, bent her own knees slightly and hoisted Meg over a shoulder.

"Ooufff." Meg made a surprised sound and reflexes made her pull on the short hospital gown to keep it from showing off more than she wanted it to in one day.

"Don't move around too much." Jo told her, hefting her one more time, so she knew she had a secure hold on Meg. "I don't want to drop you."

Meg very much agreed with the idea of not dropping her and kept as still as possible. As Jo began to walk, the glass under her leather boots crunched and shattered further under the pressure of their combined weight. Jo, walking faster, the reeling of propel ropes giving her a good idea as to how close the enemy was, broke out into a run when she saw the red of a laser light flickering across her chest. She skidded a corner and her luck was shit when she realized that she'd run into a barricade of guards. Pistols in hands and SWAT shields set up. She shot at them while backing up into another corridor.

A guard was sneaking up on them, and Meg with her eyes to Jo's back, spotted him and grabbed the gun tucked away in Jo's pants. She flicked off the safety and took him out before he could even lift his gun at them in defense.

Jo didn't pay attention to what was going on at her back, as she was steadily taking out the shielded guards behind the corner. Guards were coming in from the back now, trying to cage them in, but Meg kept picking them off. She reached into Jo's pocket for extra ammo and reloaded the gun. Jo put her hand out, and Meg realizing that the other girl had run out of ammo, handed her the reloaded gun, taking the empty pistol being offer to her and reloading it so she would be ready to take on another set of guards when they came.

Meg slipped down from where she had been bent over and shot some approaching bad guys over Jo's shoulder.

"We can't let them box us in. I've cleared the front. We should move." Jo grabbed Meg's arm and bolted down the corridor. Meg ignored all the blood and the groaning bodies in their path as she ran over some of them. Jo flung a shield out of the way and continued to run with Meg. However she skidded to a stop when an automated guard-bot, bigger than a door crashed through the corner they were about to take. Meg threw the gun she had been holding towards Jo, and the other girl opened full fire on the machine. She was able to take down an arm, but it crashed forward towards them and Jo spotting a door, kicked it open and pulled Meg inside.

Meg spotted a window and ran towards it, while Jo watched the door, her guns ready to blast whatever came through. Meg slid the window open and peered out, the cold blast of air hitting her and making goose bumps on her arms.

"Geez this is going to suck. C'mon Jo, let's go." Meg called and Jo glancing back behind her, didn't say anything, only followed the red-head outside the window, while getting a pretty good view of Meg's panties in the process.

Meg looked down at the space between her and a very messy death. She gulped, knowing that if she fell from this distance, they'd never be able to put her back together again.

Jo without batting an eyelash lowered herself from the concrete jut they were precariously standing on and with her enviously perfect balance she landed on all fours on the ledge under them. She shattered the glass in front of her with her boot and then unlatched the window, her body disappearing inside for a moment, before she poked her head out and stretched out her hands. Meg, closing her eyes and not believing she was doing this, let herself fall. She landed on the ledge but since she wasn't Jo and didn't have freakish cat jumping abilities, her landing tipped her back. However Jo grabbed her by the arm before she could plummet to her death and Meg tipped forward, landing right into Jo's waiting arms.

"Whew. God that took at least ten years off my life." Meg smiled at Jo and Jo staring back at the girl, suddenly realized something as the red head leaned into her.

"You're lighter."

"Huh?" Meg asked, not at all expecting to be hit in the face with that.

"I said you're lighter." Meg thought Jo's face couldn't get more expressionless if she was reporting the evening weather forecast to her.

"You think?" She said, and she really knew this wasn't the time to be discussing her weight loss, but if Jo noticed then who was she to deny it.

"Yes." Jo said flatly. Then her eyebrows furrowed together in a strangely cute expression. "I don't like it. You should eat more." Jo responded and moved away from her, walking towards the door and pulling out her guns in the process.

"You…you don't like it?" Meg who was still stuck on this topic and for good reasons, as she didn't understand how Jo couldn't like it, appealed to the other girl for a second time. "How could you not like it?"

Jo gave her a look that asked quite plainly, 'why they were still on this subject?'

"Don't gimme that look. I lost weight for you." Er…technically she just lost the weight because the stupid scientists wouldn't give her anything to eat dammit, but Jo didn't need to know that.

"Then you should put more weight on. I like you when you eat." Jo said, and Meg just couldn't understand how the other girl's brain worked. She liked her when she ate? What kind of logic was that? Seriously Jo needed a lesson in how society worked, because obviously she wasn't getting it.

Meg, pouting at the fast dismissal of all the lost calories that she had been proud off, put her hands on her hips and started up in lecture mode, while Jo opened the door slightly to check for guards. "I can't believe…Fine then, if you want a fat girlfriend. I'm more than willing to provide. I'll be _so_ fat…well I'll be fat." Meg said and hmmped at the same time.

Jo plainly looked back at her and then all of a sudden, her eyes strayed down to her ass.

Meg a little bit—okay a lot bit—taken aback by the sudden ogling coming from Jo, couldn't open her mouth to say anything.

Jo's eyes came back up to her face, like she hadn't just been staring at her ass, or like she had no idea she'd been caught staring at her ass, and then said, again like she was reading from a boring book, "Okay."

"Okay?" Meg didn't think she would ever understand her girlfriend.

Not in a million years.

"There should be some stairs on this floor. We'll get off on the 20th floor and if the keycard for the elevator doesn't work, we'll manually open it and scale down using the cables to the remaining floors."

"I'm not Spiderman."

"What?"

"Never mind." Meg said, sighing and at the same time preparing herself for the impossible feats that her girlfriend wanted her to perform. Geez it was hard being in a relationship with an overactive partner.

Jo checked the hallway again, and then both sneaked off to the stairwell. Jo knocked out a guard that had been positioned at the door, and Meg found herself clapping at how cool Jo looked when she got the big guard and put him in a sleeper hold. Meg to her horror realized that this felt all too much like one of their dates. Her innerself crying at the realization of what a date should actually be like. What happened to movies, and flowers, and romantic Ferris wheel rides and holding hands under the stars? Seriously?

Well they _were_ holding hands now, and well…this was kind of like a movie. Except it wasn't a date movie, it was more like one of those horror flicks Jo enjoyed so much. Also, the last time she checked guns weren't flowers and don't even get her started on the Ferris wheel of doom that she had experienced moments ago, when she had jumped off that ledge.

They were _so_ going on a normal, key word **normal** date when they got out of here.

And with that in mind, Meg followed after Jo as they ran down ten flights of stairs. She didn't know about thread mills, but this was definitely a better workout. When they reached the twentieth floor, Meg was both relieved and irritated to see that the stairs no longer continued on.

"Is this why we can't take the remaining stairs down?"

"They make it so that you have to take the elevator and use a keycard."

Meg walked out of the door, but the sound of cocking guns stopped her cold in her tracks. She could distinctly hear the cocking of two guns behind her, as she guessed Jo liked to try and even out the odds stacked up against them.

"Nice to see you again, 013." A distinguished gentleman, who looked like he was in his early forties marched out from the throng of RAPT forces, his gray, stylish business suit and movie star good looks making him stand very much apart from the crowd. "I see you came to pick up your…friend." The man put his one hand up, and two uniformed men stepped forward. There guns now in close proximity to Meg.

"Um Jo?" Meg said in panicked fashion.

Jo cocked her guns stubbornly, "You let her go."

"And why would I do something like that?" The man asked. At that time, the elevator dinged open and he turned to it with a casual eye. "Oh, seems that our good doctors have arrived." And with that said, both Mavors and Bellona stepped out of the elevator, both clean and pressed in their own doctoral attire.

Mavors strutted to the man's side, while Bellona walked in a business like fashion to the other. She carried a clipboard in her hand and Meg instantly recognized her.

"That's the lady that kept force-feeding me carrots, Jo." Meg said, despite the desperate situation they were in, she just couldn't keep herself from commenting.

Jo took note that the woman was Bellona. The female scientist that had been with Mavors the first time she met him. She was standing closely to the mysterious man, her head bowed, her glasses obscuring her face, as she positioned herself slightly behind her benefactor. Mavors was standing slightly in front, his face a mask, but his posture not submissive and trained like Bellona.

"You've met these two before, haven't you, 013?" The mysterious man said, and he put his hand out in front of Bellona. "This is my secretary and personal doctor, Miss Maya Tsukimura. And this gentleman to my left is Mr. Lucius Bask." He introduced congenially. "Oh but it's rude to introduce others and leave out yourself. You might know of me, as I'm now the acting Governor for Tokyo. My name is Ricky Glenford." He said in a proud voice that belied all his so-called politeness.

"So you're the bastard that kicked us out of Tokyo." Jo said, more than aware off Sei's financial problems and that a large backer had been manipulating her family's assets and "coercing" others into switching alliances within the Bai Lan circle.

"Kicked is such an ugly word. More like displaced. By the way, how is dear Mrs. Sei doing? She hasn't given me an answer yet as to the idea of a company merge."

"You mean hostile takeover." Jo interrupted, glaring at him as she realized he was the man behind all of this.

"That's such an ugly word too. You see politicians like myself don't like ugly words. We'd rather have something that makes the people we govern feel better."

"Asshole." Meg said, her mouth moving before she could stop the two syllables from leaking out.

One of the guards nudged her in the side with his rifle in warning.

Glenford looked at Meg carefully and then started up again, "Yes some may call me that, but I'm more of a revolutionary. I plan to make this world a brighter place, a place where firearms and violence do not exist. It is for this exact reason why I'm initiating the Tokyo restoration project. It is to restore light to the hope filled masses."

He put his hands up as if he was pastor in a church, readying his flock for prayer. "And to do that I must recreate society as we know it. Pull Tokyo and the world from the dregs of civilization's wasted culture. I need the help of young people such as yourselves." He pointed to Meg and Jo, but his eyes had stayed on Jo as he continued on. "If you want a better world, it is best to follow an adequate leader who can properly guide you and help you along with the betterment of this beautiful world that's encased under dirty glass."

He walked out from between Mavors and Bellona and approached Jo, but dared not to leave the circle of his guards. "You my child are going to lead my cause and put this world's future on the right track again. It may be hard, and it may be a bloody path, but it is for the good of civilization as we know it, my dear."

Jo knew he was trying to appeal to her sense of what was right and wrong, like a preacher who was conducting a sermon to a room full of convicts, he spoke of nothing but the glory of good. But Jo was still wanting proof of that goodness and she knew this Glenford wouldn't be able to give that to her. He was just a senile dictator, who to an extreme believed his way was right.

"The start of a whole new war, a whole new fight that will rally those wanting a better world to come under my leadership. World War III. That is the ultimate goal of this institution and after years of biological and artificial-programming, I hope to give my good scientists the results they desire." He held her eyes like a hawk about to dive in for the prey, "0013, you may not understand your purpose but know that your parents have been working on this project and are waiting for its fruition." He walked back to the line that was made up of Mavors and Bellona. Jo felt her heart clam up at the word Glenford had used and the apparent suggestion of his walking back to Mavors and Bellona.

"I did not introduce them properly before, but these are your biological parents, 013."

Jo made a choked sound before she could cover it up, and Meg, her eyes flashing with worry for the one behind her, looked at the face of the man and woman before her.

"Oh my god." The doctor had looked like Jo for a reason and here it was, staring her right in the face. She looked at the woman and noticed the indifferent way she stood, that silent, statue-like presence that Jo had seemed to master naturally. God, it was like that stupid saying, 'the acorn never fell too far from the tree' or more likely the gun-toting acorn didn't fall too far from the psychotic-evil scientist tree. Meg needed to sit down and she wasn't even the one who'd found her long lost parents.

Jo's guns were steady, but her eyes had a wild look to them that could only be described as an animal's fear. Her heart thumping like a rabbit in her chest, the pulse in her throat fluttering like a dying butterfly, and her lips dry like a cottonmouth.

"With the aid of your parents 013, this project will come to its completion. Mavors," Glenford called, while putting his hands on his shoulder, "Named after the God of War and Bellona," he smiled at her and she bowed her head, "Named after the Goddess Enyo, Waster of Cities. Both God and Goddess of War will be more than sufficient to aid you in the summoning of a new war, a great ideological war."

Glenford took both their hands and placed them on top of each other. He looked to Jo, "Come my child. Come join your parents and throw off the shackles of your old life."

Meg, turning around and seeing Jo's face, pale with shock, eyes shivering in their socket, could no longer hold back her voice. "Jo…" She didn't know what to say after that, because these were Jo's parents. This was Jo's mother and this was Jo's father. Meg couldn't just tell Jo she shouldn't go to them. She couldn't just say they were bad people and that Jo should stay with her. Things were different now, much different.

Jo with a hesitant step walked forward, her guns now limp at her sides, as she walked right past Meg as if she didn't see her. It hurt her, it hurt her more than she could ever say with words and it took strength of control she didn't know she had to not latch onto Jo's hand and beg the girl to stay with her.

Jo came up to the now smiling Glenford, and stared both her parents in the eyes. She looked at her mother, who's solemn, quiet face was beautiful and stoic. She stared at her father whose face was more familiar to hers, more like hers in the straight aristocratic features and the skinny build.

Mavors held out his hand to her and she could see those eyes, eyes that she knew were a spiritual reflection of hers. This man was her father. He would know what was in her heart before she could even begin to explain it, so it was with this that she handed him one of her guns.

She stepped away and Glenford's smile was that of jubilance as he realized his plan was coming together quite nicely. Jo said nothing. She waited. She waited for her father and her soul's reflection to make his decision.

_Click._

It happened in a split second. One of Mavors hands raised not in peace, but in war, as he held the mouth of the pistol up to Glenford's head and before Bellona could even gasp, he had pulled the trigger and splattered the governor's precious brain experimentation, green fluids and bits of specialized machinery, all over the cold concrete floors.

"NO!" Bellona screamed and she was dealt the task of holding onto the now very headless body of the politician, as it fell into her arms.

Jo moved faster than she had ever in her life, as she kicked away one of the guards from Meg and shot the other two times in the face, more blood spilling out on the ground to join the pools of it already there.

The sounds of her other gun penetrated the air, as Mavors wielded it with a skill that a doctor of his profession should have never obtained, taking out RAPT members left and right. Between the two of them, they cleared the whole room.

"Why? How could you…Lucius…how…" the silent, stoic woman who Jo had come to see as her mother was now crying and clutching onto the remains of Glenford. "Why?" She asked again, her voice hoarse, her glasses having fallen off her face in her attempt to catch Glenford and hold his body upright. Her hair no longer in that neat, tight bun at the back of her head, but unruly, with sweat on her brows and her bangs sticking to her forehead. "How could you just kill him? Why would you do something like this? You had nothing to gain!"

Mavors closed his eyes and waved Jo's gun so the girl would come for it. He sighed loudly and then opened his eyes when the gun was removed from his shaking grasp. His eyes were bloodshot. "I suppose there was no good reason…just a bit of jealously." He said and then a small smile came over his features. "You can hate me Maya, but I'll get used to it, like I get used to everything." He came to stoop right next to her and pried her elegant fingers from the death grip they had taken on Glenford's suit jacket. "You'll get used to it too, in time." She let go of Glenford then. She had no choice with Mavors hands around her shoulders. She let out a mournful cry and collapsed into Mavor's arms, sobbing into his shirt.

Jo stood quietly. Meg coming up to her felt Jo's fingers slip over her hand. It squeezed around her palm and Meg leaned against Jo's shoulder in a tired slump.

Mavors, who was still looking down at the crying woman in his arms, offering no words of consolation, but neither letting up the light embrace on her shoulders, looked up at the two girls in front of him.

"I'm not good with crying women." He threw out, like there wasn't one in arms right now.

"Me neither." Jo agreed and continued to watch her mother as she lost herself in superficial grief for a man that she must have assumed she loved.

Meg felt a pang shoot through her heart at the woman's tears, even though she knew what the doctor had done was the right choice, it was still heartbreaking to watch this woman cry.

"So what will you do now?" Mavors asked, his black eyes unfocused as he looked at nothing in particular, but only held onto the woman.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" Jo said with the same look in her eyes.

"Not if you want to hang around here and find out how many guards Glenford had posted." The woman in his arms flinched at the use of the name, but Mavors didn't look like he particularly cared.

"I guess." Jo said, with that same detached voice.

Mavors smiled down on the crying woman tucked into his chest and said with a bit of curiosity, "Will it bother you if you can't see us again?"

Jo tucked her guns away in the pants she wore. "No."

The man looked up at her, his dark eyes staring into hers for a good minute, before looking back down at the woman. "Then goodbye…Jo."

Meg wanted to say something, anything to make those words change into other words, words that didn't include a goodbye from this man.

Jo nodded at him and then turned around like he wasn't there anymore. Meg felt her eyes water and she ran after Jo as the other girl slid the doctor's keycard over a device in the wall.

The elevator dinged open and when she got in, like some cruel joke, Meg had to face the picture of Mavors holding onto Bellona, his eyes no longer on the woman, but on Jo's face. He waved to her. The doors closed.

And Meg started crying, because watching Jo, her eyes completely dry, her face bearing no emotion and her guns being taken into her hands yet again, she understood that the girl beside her couldn't cry. Wasn't capable of it and for that, and that only Meg would shed tears.

She would cry the tears that Jo couldn't.

**

* * *

A/n:** Hmm, well I hoped somebody enjoyed that. The character of Bellona/Maya Tsukimura is actually the secretary that we always see hanging around Glenford in the anime. I based her off that character because I thought why not give that woman a purpose.

For all those who are interested, Mavors is just another name for Mars. In some of the poetry written by Virgil, this is what he called the War God. Bellona is a roman warrior goddess, whose variously identified as his wife, sister, daughter or cousin. Enyo, which means horror, and known by the epithet "Waster of Cities" is the Greek counterpart to Bellona. She was usually depicted as covered in blood and carrying weapons of war. Bellona is derived from the Latin word for war (bellum). Another fun fact, all Senate meetings relating to foreign war were conducted in the Templum Bellonae (Temple of Bellona) on Collis Capitolinus.


	19. Sleeping Beauty

There were ways to tell someone you loved them without having to actually resort to using words to do it. Words were incomplete most of the time. They only showed one side, one surface and not the multi-tiered chambers of a heart. The word love was something that confused, disorientated, elated, angered and saddened people. It was a word that had such strong connotations chained to it, that it gave the sense of only one option, one choice. That death and life were the balancers of the scale and nothing existed in the middle. No justice, no selflessness, no friendship…only love, love, love.

Jo was sitting on the couch.

She'd been given a lot of time to think over this word and all the ways this one word could be expressed, and the more she thought about those expressions of love, the more she realized that she'd already done all of them…twice. So what was there left for her to do, but say those three words?

"I love you." She said out loud suddenly, testing them on her tongue like it would corrode away if she wasn't careful and didn't practice.

Meg had frozen in the doorway with a plate of curly fries held in her hand.

"What?"

Jo, realizing that she was no longer alone, turned back to face the front, after she had ascertained it was Meg by visual aid. She began to pick at her fingernails.

"Jo…?" Meg's feet pattered over the ground and the redhead was suddenly in front of her. A yearning look on her face, "What did you just say?"

Jo bit her thumbnail, because it was longer than the rest. She should clip it, but she couldn't find a nail clipper anywhere around the trailer, and filing them seemed to take too long. She looked up at the redhead in front of her, "I was just practicing."

Meg put down the plate in her hand and sat next to the other girl. "Practicing what?"

"Stuff." Jo said, and it was the first time Jo had ever spoken to her in such an indirect way, usually Jo's bluntness would have struck her upside the head right about now.

Meg laughed despite herself.

* * *

"I had no idea that guy was your father?" Meg said, as she curled up to Jo on the couch, cushions stacked around them and making their little nook even more comfortable. Jo sighed and rested her head against Meg's head.

"I don't really have parents. They didn't give birth to me…they were just donors. I read about it. I'm what'd you call a test tube baby."

"Don't say it like that." Meg said, "It sounds sad when you say it like that." Okay it was sad, but it didn't need to be anymore sadder than it already was. "I think…well even if he's not really, you know, he still kind of…acted like one. I like him."

"Why's that?" Jo said absently and scratched her stomach, while yawning. "I'm tired." She said not waiting for an answer from Meg, but curling up against the redhead like a cat, resting her head on the girl's chest and nuzzling into her, as she prepared to take a nap.

"JO!" Meg screeched, feeling embarrassed, even though they'd already done…stuff and this wasn't really anything that should get her so worked up. Jo cuddled into her again and closed her eyes.

"I thought we were having a conversation." Meg said, and pouted. She really did want to know what Jo thought about…well those people. If this situation was bothering her at all, Meg was surely to lend an ear and a shoulder to cry on. Although she knew that would NEVER happen, as Jo was still nuzzling into her and dropping off to sleep.

"No you don't!" Meg shook her by the shoulder. "C'mon Jo. It's not good to hold stuff in like this. You should be more com-mu-ni-cative." Oh lookie she used a big word. Too bad she kind of stumbled over it. Ah well. "I want to know what Jo's thinking right now."

"Jo's thinking she needs to sleep," Jo said, while burying her head into her chest with a sigh. Meg stopped herself from shaking the other girl again, and stared at the lovely image that Jo painted. Her silvery hair tussled; her face slack in sleep and her mouth not pined up in a sneer or smirk. Jo really looked like an angel when she slept, that much Meg knew, even if she was a demon every other waking moment of her life. Jo was…special. Jo was different then other people and so it was only normal that she handled things much differently than your average…Joe shmoe. And in her own way she was handling this situation. Jo was usually very inactive after she got back from a gunfight. Meg thought it was because Jo would be physically tired after such an ordeal…but really it was something more. It was more like Jo was also rehabilitating not from any physical wounds, but the mental scars too. She might be hard boiled, but Jo still felt things. She might not recognize what they were, but they were there, under the edges and shields adolescent programming and her circumstances had provided her. Jo was tired because she was unaware of the toil such things took out of her psychologically. It was her time to regroup the information she was given, and to assess the mental damage, before she moved on again. Jo was kind of like a computer, rebooting its systems and detecting viruses within her, and wiping them out, even if she didn't know what those viruses contained. The way she did these things were almost mechanical, programmed, but the fact that they existed, and that she couldn't just run into battle again without this needed time, it was proof of her humanity. Jo was human, after all, even if she didn't think so.

* * *

"You're such a grump when you sleep so long. C'mon, get up sleepy head." Meg had dragged Jo to her bedroom after a while of cuddling on the couch and was now shaking her awake. "If you sleep too long you might never wake up again and I might have to call Kyouhei in here to give you a kiss."

"What?" Jo rolled onto her side and looked at her through her white bangs.

"I can't give you a kiss. I'm not a prince. I'm a princess. Jo needs a prince to wake her up," Meg said teasingly and Jo closed her eyes against Meg's nonsense.

"Just kiss me and call it even." Jo said, and planted herself on her back and closed her eyes, like she was indeed a princess waiting for prince charming.

"So you're not getting up until I kiss you?"

"Screw prince charming." Jo said, her voice giving a hint of the smirk she wasn't showing, as she opened one eye in time to see Meg leaning down and kissing her. She wrapped her arms around Meg's neck as the other girl hovered over her.

Meg pulled away, her fingers brushing over her lips. "You think we have…I mean everybody's in the living room and…"

"That never stopped you before." Jo said, sitting up, suddenly wide-awake.

Well Jo indeed had a point. It was Meg who initiated their first time. She didn't think she was ever truly shy about expressing things like this to Jo. She was secure enough in her feelings to know that she wanted the physical aspect of the relationship, wanted it and craved it for some time now. But after what had happened, that awkward, strange, beautiful, breath-taking night, the last night before all of this happened, it had saddened her to some degree at how much she felt for Jo, but how much Jo didn't seem to understand the emotion. Jo was loving with her, but was Jo truly in love with her. She felt like she was forcing her love on the other girl. However, that moment of strange embarrassment Jo had showed when she'd walked in on her saying those words. Simple and sweet in that impossibly apathetic way Jo had about her. It'd shocked her. It really did. She thought maybe Jo was reading something at first, but when she looked down, the other girl hadn't been holding anything in her hands. Neither, the thought slapped her in the back of the head at how obvious it was, Jo wasn't someone who really cared to read, and if she did on the of chance, then she surely wouldn't be reading something with the words "I love you" in print. So what was it? She'd thought it was kind of funny. Jo saying those words out of the blue and here she was always thinking about those words all the time, wanting so much to hear those words. Irony could be a cruel thing. Could it be self-projection? Jo in her own way could be strangely perceptive to her moods, like some kind of wild animal. She did have good instincts. And again Jo was perceptive to the weirdness that she was throwing off with her reticence to be intimate. She was scared. Every time they were together she felt desperate. Like she'd never let Jo go, even when everything was done, she just couldn't let the other girl go. It hurt too much. The physical aspect of their relationship only made her yearn more instead of quelling whatever was inside of her and she felt empty. Even after eating, it was like there was lead in her stomach and she felt heavy, but empty. Weighted down by impossible dreams and words that she would never truly receive.

"Meg?" Jo asked and scooted over to sit in front of her. "Did…I not do it right?"

"Eh?" Meg said, brought out of her stupor by Jo suddenly not making any sense.

"That night. I wanted to ask you." Jo pushed on with that cool head of hers. "What I did…did it feel good?"

Meg blushed. What the heck was Jo talking about? Of course it felt…well good. Jo was such a weirdo.

"You're so weird." Meg said, even though she knew this wasn't the best way to answer this. It just came out.

Jo made a face at her.

"It was…" terrifyingly good, "I liked it a lot." Oh good one. "Jo…you shouldn't ask me questions like that. I mean you could tell I liked it…" just by the sounds I was making, "just by…" she blushed again, "This is stupid." Meg finally giving up scooted the extra way to put her in Jo's arms. She placed her hands, palm flat on the other girl's chest and pushed until Jo was on her back.

Jo looked up at her. "I guess I need more practice." And the blandness in which she had said those words, totally threw her for a loop. More practice? Jo sounded like she was talking about riding a bike…or riding Django. Only Jo could turn sex into a competition and for some reason, the fact that the other girl wanted to get better at it, made Meg's head spin a little. Crap, did Jo want to kill her, because…well…if she got better then Meg knew she surely wouldn't be able to survive _that._

"I'll get better." Jo said again, like she had just fallen off her imaginary bike.

Meg opened her mouth to explain--slowly this time--to Jo that there was no need to get better as she particularly wanted to live, a healthy, long, credit-card friendly life. However Jo cut her off with a swift kiss and she almost bitten the other girl in surprise. Her hot mouth shifting, lips slightly stiff as Jo didn't really soften the kiss on contact only made it firmer, harder. She was a bit clumsy and she had to use her hands to move Meg's mouth to how she wanted it, tipping her chin back and letting her tongue slide in. Meg made a muffled sound, appreciative, but at the same time frustrated, as Jo seemed to not want her to breath.

Meg, pulling in air from her nose and tightening her arms around the other girl's shoulder leaned back and let gravity take control. They both fell to the mattress and Jo's immediate response was to place both her palms on either side of Meg, bracing her up, as she kissed the other girl. They stayed that way for a good amount of time, until Jo pressed down harder on top of her, shifting right between her legs, one of her knees sliding up the bed so she could kneel between Meg's legs and get the leeway to pull her T-shirt off, that same knee accidentally brushing against Meg's clit through her clothing and causing the other girl to mewl in pleasure. However Meg's visual sensory was also being stimulated, as Jo now shirtless and in her underwear--which was remedied moments later by Jo's deft fingers, her underwear now someone off to the side of the bed--leaned over her.

"You're wearing too much clothes." Jo said, and Meg could feel her heartbeat quicken and something else that felt like irony buttering through her system. This was the first time anyone had ever told her she was wearing too much of…anything.

"Well then fix me up then." Meg teased and raised her hands, wanting Jo to be the one to undress her, because Jo's fingers, for some reason, weren't shaking like hers. Were calm and steady and even though she didn't know what she was doing half the time, they were still sure of themselves. Jo didn't have any objections, as she began to pull Meg's tank top over her head. Jo looked at the lace bra she was wearing and then frowned.

"You have to handle that." Jo said, because never once in her life did she wear a bra. She didn't feel she needed one, as hers, she thought were small enough to not get in the way, unlike Meg and Sei's, which got in the way _all the time._

So while Meg was taking off her bra, Jo not deterred from moving on, slipped her fingers under the waistline of Meg's jeans and yanked them down, her movement swift and rough, without meaning to be. Then she pulled down Meg's underwear in the same fashion and threw it off the bed and to the floor.

Meg did the same thing to her bra, and in one extravagant toss they were both completely and utterly naked. Jo stared down at her and Meg stared up, but it was still so exciting and embarrassing when they looked at each other. She didn't ever think she'd get used to seeing Jo naked, or Jo looking at her, like she was right now. With that curious, steady gaze that spoke of trust and intent.

Meg sweeping her palms up the other girl's sides, a tickling motion that made Jo squirm a little, but not in a bad way, laughed when she saw the cute, almost grumpy look on the girl's face at finding a weakness.

Jo leaned down and those pure, blood red eyes were staring at her now, like a cat, looking for the branch in which to lay down for the day, to scope prey out, to sleep and forget. Then Jo met her mouth timidly and it was such a contrast from before, she nipped at her bottom lip and still kept those amazing eyes open, lidded but with a subtle resolution burning within in them. Jo covered her mouth entirely with hers and Meg immediately responded, her hands going up to link around Jo's neck and pull the other girl flush, until she could feel Jo's nipples pressing into her own. One of her knees jumped up at the sudden delicious friction and it pressed between Jo's legs, the other girl's eyes widening for a split second before she moved experimentally against her thigh. Jo's eyes closed then, and her brow furrowed, like she was trying to concentrate on one thing and something else was getting at her. It was most likely the kiss, or the touch of sensitive nipples against bared skin. Jo swallowed around the kiss they were sharing and Meg passing her hands over Jo's shoulders felt the other girl jerk up.

"Nggghh…uuhhh." Meg's knee was pressing more firmly against Jo's clit and the result had the other girl trying to keep herself balanced, as she braced her hands more firmly on the mattress. Meg watched on in delight as Jo, struggling with too much sensation, the gratifying sounds of her pleasure leaking out of her and being shared within the same kiss, had to close her own eyes and try not to pass out. Suddenly one of Jo's hands, like it had a mind of its own, clamped over her thigh, her fingers squeezing the soft flesh and causing a shock of pleasure to run its course up the sensitive area and pool inside her vagina. That hand slid up, not feathery soft, but solid and within a couple of heart rendering seconds, that hand with calloused fingers and soft palms had pressed into the warmth at her epicenter. Meg thrashed, despite herself and was delirious at how wet she was. Jo had hitched up on her again, was still slowly and thoroughly riding her thigh as her fingers began their ministrations. There were burning touches that scorched all the way inside and then soft, pressing caresses that lapped at the flames. Meg whimpered and Jo also trying to get at her own finish, continued to rub herself against Meg's warm, soft thigh. The pressure constricting her airway passages, her pored raised up in that similar tightness that seemed to affect her breathing.

Jo's fingers were deep inside of her, and with each added digit the pressure intensified. The white-haired girl's eyes shut tight against the pleasure blossoming in her own gut and the kisses they were still sharing. Now desperate and sweet like nectar. Jo quickened her pace, both her fingers and her lower body finding a tandem in which to ride out this taunt pleasure. The single breathe of gratification coursing through her and making her move even faster, coercing her, demanding of her to keep the friction between them and to let her finally have a release of the tension clinging to her nerve endings. Clinging to her soul, ever since Meg had been taken away from her and she had no way to quench the ache in her heart, in her fingers, in her mouth, until now.

Meg mindless with lust, moved her leg roughly against Jo, the other girl's palm brushing and burning sensation into her clitoris, the feeling building and raising like transient smoke and condemning them to move even faster and trap that haze between them, finally find release.

Jo was the first to orgasm, her body shaking like a leaf and her white bangs sticking to her like snow and icicles after they had melted. Meg came afterwards, with her legs sliding even more open and a panting breath being swallowed by Jo's still burgeoning mouth. The noises Meg made after, desperate and hoarse, as she came down from that unbelievable high making Jo groan in agreement.

"I…Meg…" Jo whispered, and she nearly fell on top of her when she tried to reorient herself. The arms bracing herself up now shaking with the aftermath of extreme pleasure and Meg thought that maybe it wasn't so bad to not receive those words, not when she was the only person in the world, who could see Jo like this, to see that tough exterior trembling and shaking in incoherency and beautiful honesty. She could live with the fact that those words…maybe didn't mean so much as the value she had placed on them, like a crown of jewels, the hollow fairy tale. She loved Jo and even though Jo had never spoken of it directly to her, this moment, this shared ecstasy, the feeling afterward, and Jo's actions and responses to her plight, were something more substantial. Something more that words couldn't capture as well.

"Meg, am I getting better?" Jo asked and she nuzzled into her, finally lowering herself on top of Meg and resting her head on her chest. Meg's legs now spreading and tangling with her own.

"Jo's the best at everything she does." Meg answered back, and she kissed the top of her head and sighed at the upcoming wave of slumber rolling over her tired limbs. She slept like sleeping beauty poisoned after that and to her, it was the best sleep she had ever had.

* * *

Meg, putting her arm around Jo's shoulders pulled her in closer. Jo's breath was escaping across her collarbone and fanning some of her red hair. Meg closed her eyes and the sounds of Jo's even breathing gave her a calm that she didn't think anyone could ever give her. She felt at peace.

"Meg…you smell like perfume." Jo bleary eyed looked up at her from her perch above her chest.

"Oh, you like it. I put it on just for you."

"I don't like it." Jo answered in that completely blunt, unsophisticated manner. "It's too sweet. I could smell it when I was dreaming." Jo's head sagged to one side. "My leg's asleep."

Meg rolled her eyes and wondered what dams of hell she'd unleashed when it was Jo who was whining, but still in that nondescript voice. Jo's words also had caught her unaware.

"You dream Jo?" Jo never told her anything like that before.

Jo looked thoughtful for a moment, "Sometimes, when I'm comfortable."

"So you dream about nice things when you sleep like that?" Meg asked and smiled down at Jo, as she righted herself on the bed.

"Yeah." Jo said. She scratched her elbow and looked to her right, like something had caught her eyes, even though there was nothing particularly interesting to look at in the room, with the exception of each other.

"What do you dream about?"

Jo looked at her when she asked this and then shrugged her shoulders. "Sometimes…I dream about you."

**End.**


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